Nucleosynthesis of Light Elements and Heavy r-Process Elements through the nu-Process in Supernova Explosion

Abstract

We study the nucleosyntheses of the light elements 7Li and 11B and the r-process elements in Type II supernovae from the point of view of supernova neutrinos and Galactic chemical evolution. We investigate the influence of the luminosity and average energy (temperature) of supernova neutrinos on these two nucleosynthesis processes. Common models of the total energy E_nu and the decay time of the neutrino luminosity tau_nu of supernova neutrinos are adopted to understand both processes. We adopt the model of the supernova explosion of a 16.2 M_odot star, which corresponds to SN 1987A, and calculate the nucleosynthesis of the light elements by the postprocessing. We find that the ejected masses of 7Li and 11B are roughly proportional to the total neutrino energy and weakly dependent on the decay time of the neutrino luminosity. As for the r-process nucleosynthesis, we adopt the same models of the neutrino luminosity in the neutrino-driven wind models of a 1.4 M_odot neutron star. We find that the r-process nucleosynthesis is affected through the peak neutrino luminosity, which depends on E_nu/tau_nu. We also discuss the unresolved problem of the overproduction of 11B in the Galactic chemical evolution of the light elements. We have to assume E_{nu} < 1.2 \times 10^{53} ergs to avoid the overproduction of 11B, which is too small to accept in comparison to 3.0 \times 10^{53} ergs deduced from the observation of SN1987A. We propose to reduce the temperature of nu_{mu, tau} and their anti-particles to T_{nu_{mu, tau}} = T_{bar{nu}_{mu,tau}} = 6.0 MeV/k. This modification of the neutrino temperature is shown to resolve the overproduction problem of 11B while still keeping a successful r-process abundance pattern.