arXiv subjects

Sherwood Richers

Publications and source records attributed to Sherwood Richers.

30 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Neutrino Fast Flavor Instability in three dimensions for a Neutron Star Merger

The flavor evolution of neutrinos in core collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers is a critically important unsolved problem in astrophysics. Following the electron flavor evolution of the neutrino system is essential for calculating the thermodynamics of compact objects as well as the chemical elements they produce. Accurately accounting for flavor transformation in these environments is challenging for a number of reasons, including the large number of neutrinos involved, the small spatial scale of the oscillation, and the nonlinearity of the system. We take a step in addressing these issues by presenting a method which describes the neutrino fields in terms of angular moments. We apply our moment method to neutron star merger conditions and show it simulates fast flavor neutrino transformation in a region where this phenomenon is expected to occur. By comparing with particle-in-cell calculations we show that the moment method is able to capture the three phases of growth, saturation, and decoherence, and correctly predicts the lengthscale of the fastest growing fluctuations in the neutrino field.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2023

Two-Moment Neutrino Flavor Transformation with applications to the Fast Flavor Instability in Neutron Star Mergers

Multi-messenger astrophysics has produced a wealth of data with much more to come in the future. This enormous data set will reveal new insights into the physics of core collapse supernovae, neutron star mergers, and many other objects where it is actually possible, if not probable, that new physics is in operation. To tease out different possibilities, we will need to analyze signals from photons, neutrinos, gravitational waves, and chemical elements. This task is made all the more difficult when it is necessary to evolve the neutrino component of the radiation field and associated quantum-mechanical property of flavor in order to model the astrophysical system of interest -- a numerical challenge that has not been addressed to this day. In this work, we take a step in this direction by adopting the technique of angular-integrated moments with a truncated tower of dynamical equations and a closure, convolving the flavor-transformation with spatial transport to evolve the neutrino radiation quantum field. We show that moments capture the dynamical features of fast flavor instabilities in a variety of systems, although our technique is by no means a universal blueprint for solving fast flavor transformation. To evaluate the effectiveness of our moment results, we compare to a more precise particle-in-cell method. Based on our results, we propose areas for improvement and application to complementary techniques in the future.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

The Fast Flavor Instability in Hypermassive Neutron Star Disk Outflows

We examine the effect of neutrino flavor transformation by the fast flavor instability (FFI) on long-term mass ejection from accretion disks formed after neutron star mergers. Neutrino emission and absorption in the disk set the composition of the disk ejecta, which subsequently undergoes $r$-process nucleosynthesis upon expansion and cooling. Here we perform 28 time-dependent, axisymmetric, viscous-hydrodynamic simulations of accretion disks around hypermassive neutron stars (HMNSs) of variable lifetime, using a 3-species neutrino leakage scheme for emission and an annular-lightbulb scheme for absorption. We include neutrino flavor transformation due the FFI in a parametric way, by modifying the absorbed neutrino fluxes and temperatures, allowing for flavor mixing at various levels of flavor equilibration, and also in a way that aims to respect the lepton-number preserving symmetry of the neutrino self-interaction Hamiltonian. We find that for a promptly-formed black hole (BH), the FFI lowers the average electron fraction of the disk outflow due to a decrease in neutrino absorption, driven primarily by a drop in electron neutrino/antineutrino flux upon flavor mixing. For a long-lived HMNS, the disk emits more heavy lepton neutrinos and reabsorbs more electron neutrinos than for a BH, with a smaller drop in flux compensated by a higher neutrino temperature upon flavor mixing. The resulting outflow has a broader electron fraction distribution, a more proton-rich peak, and undergoes stronger radiative driving. Disks with intermediate HMNS lifetimes show results that fall in between these two limits. In most cases, the impact of the FFI on the outflow is moderate, with changes in mass ejection, average velocity, and average electron fraction of order $\sim 10\%$, and changes in the lanthanide/actinide mass fraction of up to a factor $\sim 2$.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

Code Comparison for Fast Flavor Instability Simulation

The fast flavor instability (FFI) is expected to be ubiquitous in core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers. It rapidly shuffles neutrino flavor in a way that could impact the explosion mechanism, neutrino signals, mass outflows, and nucleosynthesis. The variety of initial conditions and simulation methods employed in simulations of the FFI prevent an apples-to-apples comparison of the results. We simulate a standardized test problem using five independent codes and verify that they are all faithfully simulating the underlying quantum kinetic equations under the assumptions of axial symmetry and homogeneity in two directions. We quantify the amount of numerical error in each method and demonstrate that each method is superior in at least one metric of this error. We make the results publicly available to serve as a benchmark.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

Fast Flavor Transformations

The neutrino fast flavor instability (FFI) can change neutrino flavor on time scales of nanoseconds and length scales of centimeters. It is expected to be ubiquitous in core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers, potentially modifying the neutrino signal we see, how matter is ejected from these explosions, and the types of heavy elements that form in the ejecta and enrich the universe. There has been a great deal of recent interest in understanding the role the FFI plays in supernovae and mergers, but the short length and time scales and the strong nonlinearity have prevented the FFI from being included consistently in these models. We review the theoretical nature of the FFI starting with the quantum kinetic equations, where the instability exists in neutron star mergers and supernovae, and how the instability behaves after saturation in simplified simulations. We review the proposed methods to test for instability in moment-based calculations where the full distribution is not available and describe the numerical methods used to simulate the instability directly. Finally, we close by outlining the trajectory toward realistic, self-consistent models that will allow a more complete understanding of the impact of the FFI in supernovae and mergers.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

Neutrino flavor mixing with moments

The successful transition from core-collapse supernova simulations using classical neutrino transport to simulations using quantum neutrino transport will require the development of methods for calculating neutrino flavor transformations that mitigate the computational expense. One potential approach is the use of angular moments of the neutrino field, which has the added appeal that there already exist simulation codes which make use of moments for classical neutrino transport. Evolution equations for quantum moments based on the quantum kinetic equations can be straightforwardly generalized from the evolution of classical moments based on the Boltzmann equation. We present an efficient implementation of neutrino transformation using quantum angular moments in the free streaming, spherically symmetric bulb model. We compare the results against analytic solutions and the results from more exact multi-angle neutrino flavor evolution calculations. We find that our moment-based methods employing scalar closures predict, with good accuracy, the onset of collective flavor transformations seen in the multi-angle results. However in some situations they overestimate the coherence of neutrinos traveling along different trajectories. More sophisticated quantum closures may improve the agreement between the inexpensive moment-based methods and the multi-angle approach.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

The Neutrino Fast Flavor Instability in Three Dimensions

Neutrino flavor instabilities have the potential to shuffle neutrinos between electron, mu, and tau flavor states, modifying the core-collapse supernova mechanism and the heavy elements ejected from neutron star mergers. Analytic methods indicate the presence of so-called fast flavor transformation instabilities, and numerical simulations can be used to probe the nonlinear evolution of the neutrinos. Simulations of the fast flavor instability to date have been performed assuming imposed symmetries. We perform simulations of the fast flavor instability that include all three spatial dimensions and all relevant momentum dimensions in order to probe the validity of these approximations. If the fastest growing mode has a wavenumber along a direction of imposed symmetry, the instability can be suppressed. The late-time equilibrium distribution of flavor, however, seems to be little affected by the number of spatial dimensions. This is a promising hint that the results of lower-dimensionality simulations to date have predictions that are robust against their the number of spatial dimensions, though simulations of a wider variety of neutrino distributions need to be carried out to support this claim more generally.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

Particle-in-cell Simulation of the Neutrino Fast Flavor Instability

Neutrinos drive core-collapse supernovae, launch outflows from neutron star merger accretion disks, and set the ratio of protons to neutrons in ejecta from both systems that generate heavy elements in the universe. Neutrinos of different flavors interact with matter differently, and much recent work has suggested that fast flavor instabilities are likely ubiquitous in both systems, but the final flavor content after the instability saturates has not been well understood. In this work we present particle-in-cell calculations which follow the evolution of all flavors of neutrinos and antineutrinos through saturation and kinematic decoherence. We conduct one-dimensional three-flavor simulations of neutrino quantum kinetics to demonstrate the outcome of this instability in a few example cases. We demonstrate the growth of both axially symmetric and asymmetric modes whose wavelength and growth rate match predictions from linear stability analysis. Finally, we vary the number density, flux magnitude, and flux direction of the neutrinos and antineutrinos and demonstrate that these factors modify both the growth rate and post-saturation neutrino flavor abundances. Weak electron lepton number (ELN) crossings in these simulations produce both slow growth of the instability and little difference between the flavor abundances in the initial and final states. In all of these calculations the same number of neutrinos and antineutrinos change flavor, making the least abundant between them the limiting factor for post-saturation flavor change. Many more simulations and multi-dimensional simulations are needed to fully probe the parameter space of the initial conditions.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2020

Rank-3 Moment Closures in General Relativistic Neutrino Transport

Many modern simulations of accretion disks use moment-based methods for radiation transport to determine the thermal evolution of the disk and the properties of the ejected matter. The popular M1 scheme evolves the rank-0 and rank-1 moments requires an analytic approximation for the rank-2 and higher tensors. We present the open-source Monte Carlo steady-state general-relativistic neutrino transport code SedonuGR, which we use to asses fundamental analytic closure assumptions, quantify proposed closure errors, and test an extension of the MEFD closure to the rank-3 moment. We demonstrate that the fundamental assumptions employed in all analytic closures are strongly violated. This violation is most evident at the interface between the equatorial disk and the evacuated polar regions. Finally, we calculate the neutrino momentum and energy deposition rate from neutrino pair annihilation, and demonstrate that a moment-based annihilation power calculation is accurate to at most ~20% if the rank-2 and higher moments are neglected. Out of a selection of 8 closures in the literature, we demonstrate that different closures reproduce different aspects of the radiation field (pressure tensor, rank-3 tensor, pair annihilation rate), though the MEFD, Levermore, and Janka 2 closures are all reasonable. The extra information from the neutrino degeneracy used in the MEFD closure is unable to account for the diversity in the rank-2 and rank-3 moments.

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

FRIB and the GW170817 Kilonova

In July 2018 an FRIB Theory Alliance program was held on the implications of GW170817 and its associated kilonova for r-process nucleosynthesis. Topics of discussion included the astrophysical and nuclear physics uncertainties in the interpretation of the GW170817 kilonova, what we can learn about the astrophysical site or sites of the r process from this event, and the advances in nuclear experiment and theory most crucial to pursue in light of the new data. Here we compile a selection of scientific contributions to the workshop, broadly representative of progress in r-process studies since the GW170817 event.

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↗