arXiv subjects

Hiroki Nagakura

Publications and source records attributed to Hiroki Nagakura.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

The impact of asymmetric neutrino emissions on nucleosynthesis in core-collapse supernovae

We investigate the impact of asymmetric neutrino emissions on the explosive nucleosynthesis in neutrino-driven core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe). We find that the asymmetric emissions tend to yield larger amounts of proton-rich ejecta (electron fraction, $Y_e > 0.51$) in the hemisphere of the higher $ν_{\rm e}$ emissions, meanwhile neutron-rich matter ($Y_e < 0.49$) are ejected in the opposite hemisphere of the higher ${\bar ν}_{\rm e}$ emissions. For larger asymmetric cases with $\ge 30\%$, the neutron-rich ejecta is abundantly produced, in which there are too much elements heavier than Zn compared to the solar abundances. This may place an upper limit of the asymmetric neutrino emissions in CCSNe. The characteristic features are also observed in elemental distribution; (1) abundances lighter than Ca are insensitive to the asymmetric neutrino emissions: (2) the production of Zn and Ge is larger in the neutron-rich ejecta even for smaller asymmetric cases with $\le 10\%$. We discuss these observational consequences, which may account for the (anti-)correlations among asymmetries of heavy elements and neutron star kicks in supernova remnants (SNRs). Future SNR observations of the direct measurement for the mass and spatial distributions of $α$ elements, Fe, Zn and Ge will provide us the information on the asymmetric degree of neutrino emissions.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2019

Possible early linear acceleration of proto-neutron stars via asymmetric neutrino emission in core-collapse supernovae

In this {\it Letter}, we present the result of an axisymmetric CCSN simulation conducted with appropriate treatments of neutrino transport and proper motions of proto-neutron star (PNS), in which a remarkable PNS acceleration is observed in association with asymmetric neutrino emissions by the time of $300$ms after bounce. We find that these asymmetric neutrino emissions play important roles in the acceleration of PNS in this phase. The correlation between the PNS proper motion and the asymmetric ejecta is similar to that in the neutron star (NS) kick of hydrodynamic origin. Both electron-type neutrinos ($ν_{\rm e}$) and their anti-particles ($\barν_{\rm e}$) have $\sim 10\%$ level of asymmetry between the northern and southern hemispheres, while other heavy-leptonic neutrinos ($ν_x$) have much smaller asymmetry of $\sim 1 \%$. The emissions of $\barν_{\rm e}$ and $ν_x$ are higher in the hemisphere of stronger shock expansion whereas the $ν_{\rm e}$ emission is enhanced in the opposite hemisphere: in total the neutrinos carry some linear momentum to the hemisphere of the stronger shock expansion. The asymmetry is attributed to the non-spherical distribution of electron-fraction ($Y_e$) in the envelope of PNS. Although it is similar to LESA (lepton-emission self-sustained asymmetry), the $Y_e$ asymmetry seems to be associated with the PNS motion: the latter triggers lateral circular motions in the envelope of PNS by breaking symmetry of the matter distribution there, which are then sustained by a combination of convection, lateral neutrino diffusion and matter-pressure gradient. Our findings may have an influence on the current theories on the NS kick mechanism although long-term simulations are required to assess their impact on the later evolution.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2019

Three-Dimensional Boltzmann-Hydro Code for core-collapse in massive stars III. A New method for momentum feedback from neutrino to matter

We present a new method for neutrino-matter coupling in multi-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of core-collapse supernova (CCSN) with the full Boltzmann neutrino transport. The development is motivated by the fact that the accurate conservation of momentum is required for reliable numerical modelings of CCSN dynamics including a recoil of proto-neutron star (PNS). The new method is built on a hybrid approach, in which we use the energy-momentum tensor of neutrinos to compute the momentum feedback from neutrino to matter in the optically thick region while we employ the collision term in the optically thin region. In this method we utilize a general relativistic description of radiation-hydrodynamics with angular moments, which allows us to evaluate the momentum feedback from neutrino to matter without inconsistency with our Boltzmann solver. We demonstrate that the new method substantially improves the accuracy of linear momentum conservation in our CCSN simulations under reasonable angular resolutions in momentum space, alleviating the difficulty in giving the diffusion limit precisely with the discrete ordinate (Sn) method. It is the first-ever demonstration that the PNS kick can be handled directly and properly in multi-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic simulations with the full Boltzmann neutrino transport.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2019

Characterizing the Gravitational Wave Signal from Core-Collapse Supernovae

We study the gravitational wave signal from eight new 3D core-collapse supernova simulations. We show that the signal is dominated by $f$- and $g$-mode oscillations of the protoneutron star and its frequency evolution encodes the contraction rate of the latter, which, in turn, is known to depend on the star's mass, on the equation of state, and on transport properties in warm nuclear matter. A lower-frequency component of the signal, associated with the standing accretion shock instability, is found in only one of our models. Finally, we show that the energy radiated in gravitational waves is proportional to the amount of turbulent energy accreted by the protoneutron star.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2019

Linear Analysis of Fast-Pairwise Collective Neutrino Oscillations in Core-Collapse Supernovae based on the Results of Boltzmann Simulations

Neutrinos are densely populated deep inside the core of massive stars after their gravitational collapse to produce supernova explosions and form compact stars such as neutron stars (NS) and black holes (BH). It has been considered that they may change their flavor identities through so-called fast-pairwise conversions induced by mutual forward scatterings. If that is really the case, the dynamics of supernova explosion will be influenced, since the conversion may occur near the neutrino sphere, from which neutrinos are effectively emitted. In this paper, we conduct a pilot study of such possibilities based on the results of fully self-consistent, realistic simulations of a core-collapse supernova explosion in two spatial dimensions under axisymmetry. As we solved the Boltzmann equations for neutrino transfer in the simulation not as a post-process but in real time, the angular distributions of neutrinos in momentum space for all points in the core at all times are available, a distinct feature of our simulations. We employ some of these distributions extracted at a few selected points and times from the numerical data and apply linear analysis to assess the possibility of the conversion. We focus on the vicinity of the neutrino sphere, where different species of neutrinos move in different directions and have different angular distributions as a result. This is a pilot study for a more thorough survey that will follow soon. We find no positive sign of conversion unfortunately at least for the spatial points and times we studied in this particular model. We hence investigate rather in detail the condition for the conversion by modifying the neutrino distributions rather arbitrarily by hand.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2019

On the Neutrino Distributions in Phase Space for the Rotating Core-collapse Supernova Simulated with a Boltzmann-neutrino-radiation-hydrodynamics Code

With the Boltzmann-radiation-hydrodynamics code, which we have developed to solve numerically the Boltzmann equations for neutrino transfer, the Newtonian hydrodynamics equations, and the Newtonian self-gravity simultaneously and consistently, we simulate the collapse of a rotating core of the progenitor with a zero-age-main-sequence mass of $11.2\,M_\odot$ and a shelluler rotation of $1\,{\rm rad\,s^{-1}}$ at the center. We pay particular attention in this paper to the neutrino distribution in phase space, which is affected by the rotation. By solving the Boltzmann equations directly, we can assess the rotation-induced distortion of the angular distribution in momentum space, which gives rise to the rotational component of the neutrino flux. We compare the Eddington tensors calculated both from the raw data and from the M1-closure approximation. We demonstrate that the Eddington tensor is determined by complicated interplays of the fluid velocity and the neutrino interactions and that the M1-closure, which assumes that the Eddington factor is determined by the flux factor, fails to fully capture this aspect, especially in the vicinity of the shock. We find that the error in the Eddington factor reaches $\sim 20\%$ in our simulation. This is due not to the resolution but to the different dependence of the Eddington and flux factors on the angular profile of the neutrino distribution function, and hence modification to the closure relation is needed.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

Comparing treatments of weak reactions with nuclei in simulations of core-collapse supernovae

We perform an extensive study of the influence of nuclear weak interactions on core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe), paying particular attention to consistency between nuclear abundances in the equation of state (EOS) and nuclear weak interactions. We compute properties of uniform matter based on the variational method. For inhomogeneous nuclear matter, we take a full ensemble of nuclei into account with various finite-density and thermal effects and directly use the nuclear abundances to compute nuclear weak interaction rates. To quantify the impact of a consistent treatment of nuclear abundances on CCSN dynamics, we carry out spherically symmetric CCSN simulations with full Boltzmann neutrino transport, systematically changing the treatment of weak interactions, EOSs, and progenitor models. We find that the inconsistent treatment of nuclear abundances between the EOS and weak interaction rates weakens the EOS dependence of both the dynamics and neutrino signals. We also test the validity of two artificial prescriptions for weak interactions of light nuclei and find that both prescriptions affect the dynamics. Furthermore, there are differences in neutrino luminosities by ~10% and in average neutrino energies by 0.25-1 MeV from those of the fiducial model. We also find that the neutronization burst neutrino signal depends on the progenitor more strongly than on the EOS, preventing a detection of this signal from constraining the EOS.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

On the importance of progenitor asymmetry to shock revival in core-collapse supernovae

The progenitor stars of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) are asymmetrically fluctuating due to turbulent convections in the late stages of their lives. The progenitor asymmetry at the pre-supernova stage has recently caught the attention as a new ingredient to facilitate shock revival in the delayed neutrino-heating mechanism. In this paper, we investigate the importance of the progenitor asymmetries to shock revival with a semi-analytical approach. Free parameters were chosen such that the time evolution of shock radii and mass accretion rates are compatible with the results of detailed numerical simulations of CCSNe in spherical symmetry. We first estimate the amplitude of asymmetries required for the shock revival by the impulsive change of pre-shock flows in the context of neutrino heating mechanism, and then convert the amplitude to the corresponding amplitude in the pre-supernova phase by taking into account the growth of asymmetries during infall. We apply our model to various types of progenitors and find that the requisite amplitude of pre-supernova asymmetry is roughly three times larger than the prediction by current stellar evolution models unless other additional physical ingredients such as multi-dimensional fluid instabilities and turbulent convections in post-shock flows aid shock revival. We thus conclude that progenitor asymmetries can not trigger the shock revival by the impulsive way but rather play a supplementary role in reality.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

The W4 method: a new multi-dimensional root-finding scheme for nonlinear systems of equations

We propose a new class of method for solving nonlinear systems of equations, which, among other things,has four nice features: (i) it is inspired by the mathematical property of damped oscillators, (ii) it can be regarded as a simple extention to the Newton-Raphson(NR) method, (iii) it has the same local convergence as the NR method does, (iv) it has a significantly wider convergence region or the global convergence than that of the NR method. In this article, we present the evidence of these properties, applying our new method to some examples and comparing it with the NR method.

math.NA↗

arXiv2018

Simulations of core-collapse supernovae in spatial axisymmetry with full Boltzmann neutrino transport

We present the first results of our spatially axisymmetric core-collapse supernova simulations with full Boltzmann neutrino transport, which amount to a time-dependent 5-dimensional (2 in space and 3 in momentum space) problem in fact. Special relativistic effects are fully taken into account with a two-energy-grid technique. We performed two simulations for a progenitor of 11.2M, employing different nuclear equations-of-state (EOS's): Lattimer and Swesty's EOS with the incompressibility of K = 220MeV (LS EOS) and Furusawa's EOS based on the relativistic mean field theory with the TM1 parameter set (FS EOS). In the LS EOS the shock wave reaches ~700km at 300ms after bounce and is still expanding whereas in the FS EOS it stalled at ~200km and has started to recede by the same time. This seems to be due to more vigorous turbulent motions in the former during the entire post-bounce phase, which leads to higher neutrino-heating efficiency in the neutrino-driven convection. We also look into the neutrino distributions in momentum space, which is the advantage of the Boltzmann transport over other approximate methods. We find non-axisymmetric angular distributions with respect to the local radial direction, which also generate off-diagonal components of the Eddington tensor. We find that the r θ-component reaches ~10% of the dominant rr-component and, more importantly, it dictates the evolution of lateral neutrino fluxes, dominating over the θθ-component, in the semi-transparent region. These data will be useful to further test and possibly improve the prescriptions used in the approximate methods.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2017

Neutrino emissions in all flavors up to the pre-bounce of massive stars and the possibility of their detections

This paper is a sequel to our previous one (Kato et al.2015), which calculated the luminosities and spectra of electron-type anti-neutrinos ($\barν_e$'s) from the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae. Expecting that a capability to detect electron-type neutrinos ($ν_e$'s) will increase dramatically with the emergence of liquid-argon detectors such as DUNE, we broaden the scope in this study to include all-flavors of neutrinos emitted from the pre-bounce phase. We pick up three progenitor models of an electron capture supernova (ECSN) and iron-core collapse supernovae (FeCCSNe). We find that the number luminosities reach $\sim10^{57} \mathrm{s^{-1}}$ and $\sim10^{53} \mathrm{s^{-1}}$ at maximum for $ν_e$ and $\barν_e$, respectively. We also estimate the numbers of detection events at terrestrial neutrino detectors including DUNE, taking flavor oscillations into account and assuming the distance to the progenitors to be 200 pc. It is demonstrated that $\barν_e$'s from the ECSN-progenitor will be undetected at almost all detectors, whereas we will be able to observe $\gtrsim$15900 $ν_e$'s at DUNE for the inverted mass hierarchy. From the FeCCSN-progenitors, the number of $\barν_e$ events will be largest for JUNO, 200-900 $\barν_e$'s, depending on the mass hierarchy whereas the number of $ν_e$ events at DUNE is $\gtrsim$2100 for the inverted mass hierarchy. These results imply that the detection of $\barν_e$'s is useful to distinguish FeCCSN- from ECSN-progenitors, while $ν_e$'s will provide us with detailed information on the collapse phase regardless of the type and mass of progenitor.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2017

A Detailed Comparison of Multi-Dimensional Boltzmann Neutrino Transport Methods in Core-Collapse Supernovae

The mechanism driving core-collapse supernovae is sensitive to the interplay between matter and neutrino radiation. However, neutrino radiation transport is very difficult to simulate, and several radiation transport methods of varying levels of approximation are available. We carefully compare for the first time in multiple spatial dimensions the discrete ordinates (DO) code of Nagakura, Yamada, and Sumiyoshi and the Monte Carlo (MC) code Sedonu, under the assumptions of a static fluid background, flat spacetime, elastic scattering, and full special relativity. We find remarkably good agreement in all spectral, angular, and fluid interaction quantities, lending confidence to both methods. The DO method excels in determining the heating and cooling rates in the optically thick region. The MC method predicts sharper angular features due to the effectively infinite angular resolution, but struggles to drive down noise in quantities where subtractive cancellation is prevalent, such as the net gain in the protoneutron star and off-diagonal components of the Eddington tensor. We also find that errors in the angular moments of the distribution functions induced by neglecting velocity dependence are sub-dominant to those from limited momentum-space resolution. We briefly compare directly computed second angular moments to those predicted by popular algebraic two-moment closures, and find that the errors from the approximate closures are comparable to the difference between the DO and MC methods. Included in this work is an improved Sedonu code, which now implements a fully special relativistic, time-independent version of the grid-agnostic Monte Carlo random walk approximation.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2017

Validation of Radiative Transfer Computation with Monte Carlo Method for Ultra-Relativistic Background Flow

We developed a three-dimensional radiative transfer code for an ultra-relativistic background flow-field by using the Monte Carlo (MC) method in the context of gamma-ray burst (GRB) emission. For obtaining reliable simulation results in the coupled computation of MC radiation transport with relativistic hydrodynamics which can reproduce GRB emission, we validated radiative transfer computation in the ultra-relativistic regime and assessed the appropriate simulation conditions. The radiative transfer code was validated through two test calculations: (1) computing in different inertial frames and (2) computing in flow-fields with discontinuous and smeared shock fronts. The simulation results of the angular distribution and spectrum were compared among three different inertial frames and in good agreement with each other. If the time duration for updating the flow-field was sufficiently small to resolve a mean free path of a photon into ten steps, the results were thoroughly converged. The spectrum computed in the flow-field with a discontinuous shock front obeyed a power-law in frequency whose index was positive in the range from 1 to 10 MeV. The number of photons in the high-energy side decreased with the smeared shock front because the photons were less scattered immediately behind the shock wave due to the small electron number density. The large optical depth near the shock front was needed for obtaining high-energy photons through bulk Compton scattering. Even one-dimensional structure of the shock wave could affect the results of radiation transport computation.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2017

Dependence of weak interaction rates on the nuclear composition during stellar core collapse

We investigate the influences of the nuclear composition on the weak interaction rates of heavy nuclei during the core collapse of massive stars. The nuclear abundances in nuclear statistical equilibrium (NSE) are calculated by some equation of state (EOS) models including in-medium effects on nuclear masses. We systematically examine the sensitivities of electron capture and neutrino-nucleus scattering on heavy nuclei to the nuclear shell effects and the single nucleus approximation. We find that the washout of shell effects at high temperatures brings significant change to weak rates by smoothing the nuclear abundance distribution: the electron capture rate decreases by $\sim$20$\%$ in the early phase and increases by $\sim$40$\%$ in the late phase at most, while the cross section for neutrino-nucleus scattering is reduced by $\sim$15$\%$. This is because the open-shell nuclei become abundant instead of those with closed neutron shells as the shell effects disappear. We also find that the single-nucleus description based on the average values leads to underestimations of weak rates. Electron captures and neutrino coherent scattering on heavy nuclei are reduced by $\sim$80$\%$ in the early phase and by $\sim$5$\%$ in the late phase, respectively. These results indicate that NSE like EOS accounting for shell washout is indispensable for the reliable estimation of weak interaction rates in simulations of core-collapse supernovae.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2016

Three-dimensional Boltzmann-Hydro code for core-collapse in massive stars II. The Implementation of moving-mesh for neutron star kicks

We present a newly developed moving-mesh technique for the multi-dimensional Boltzmann-Hydro code for the simulation of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe). What makes this technique different from others is the fact that it treats not only hydrodynamics but also neutrino transfer in the language of the 3+1 formalism of general relativity (GR), making use of the shift vector to specify the time evolution of the coordinate system. This means that the transport part of our code is essentially general relativistic although in this paper it is applied only to the moving curvilinear coordinates in the flat Minknowski spacetime, since the gravity part is still Newtonian. The numerical aspect of the implementation is also described in detail. Employing the axisymmetric two-dimensional version of the code, we conduct two test computations: oscillations and runaways of proto-neutron star (PNS). We show that our new method works fine, tracking the motions of PNS correctly. We believe that this is a major advancement toward the realistic simulation of CCSNe.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2016

Hyperbolic Self-Gravity Solver for Large Scale Hydrodynamical Simulations

A new computationally efficient method has been introduced to treat self-gravity in mesh based hydrodynamical simulations. It is applied simply by slightly modifying the Poisson equation into an inhomogeneous wave equation. This roughly corresponds to the weak field limit of the Einstein equations in general relativity, and as long as the gravitation propagation speed is taken to be larger than the hydrodynamical characteristic speed, the results agree with solutions for the Poisson equation. The solutions almost perfectly agree if the domain is taken large enough, or appropriate boundary conditions are given. Our new method can not only significantly reduce the computational time compared with existent methods, but is also fully compatible with massive parallel computation, nested grids and adaptive mesh refinement techniques, all of which can accelerate the progress in computational astrophysics and cosmology.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2015

Optical Synchrotron Precursors of Radio Hypernovae

We examine the bright radio synchrotron counterparts of low-luminosity gamma-ray bursts (llGRBs) and relativistic supernovae (SNe) and find that they can be powered by spherical hypernova (HN) explosions. Our results imply that radio-bright HNe are driven by relativistic jets that are choked deep inside the progenitor stars or quasi-spherical magnetized winds from fast-rotating magnetars. We also consider the optical synchrotron counterparts of radio-bright HNe and show that they can be observed as precursors several days before the SN peak with an r-band absolute magnitude of M_r ~ -14 mag. While previous studies suggested that additional trans-relativistic components are required to power the bright radio emission, we find that they overestimated the energy budget of the trans-relativistic component by overlooking some factors related to the minimum energy of non-thermal electrons. If an additional trans-relativistic component exists, then a much brighter optical precursor with M_r ~ -20 mag can be expected. Thus, the scenarios of radio-bright HNe can be distinguished by using optical precursors, which can be detectable from < 100 Mpc by current SN surveys like the Kiso SN Survey, Palomar Transient Factory, and Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2014

Three-dimensional Boltzmann-Hydro code for core-collapse in massive stars I. special relativistic treatments

We propose a novel numerical method for solving multi-dimensional, special relativistic Boltzmann equations for neutrinos coupled to hydrodynamics equations. It is meant to be applied to simulations of core-collapse supernovae. We handle special relativity in a non-conventional way, taking account of all orders of v/c. Consistent treatment of advection and collision terms in the Boltzmann equations is the source of difficulties, which we overcome by employing two different energy grids: Lagrangian remapped and laboratory fixed grids. We conduct a series of basic tests and perform a one-dimensional simulation of core-collapse, bounce and shock-stall for a 15M_{sun} progenitor model with a minimum but essential set of microphysics. We demonstrate in the latter simulation that our new code is capable of handling all phases in core-collapse supernova. For comparison, a non-relativistic simulation is also conducted with the same code, and we show that they produce qualitatively wrong results in neutrino transfer. Finally, we discuss a possible incorporation of general relativistic effects in our method.

astro-ph.HE↗