Muon Creation in Supernova Matter Facilitates Neutrino-Driven Explosions.

Muons can be created in nascent neutron stars (NSs) due to the high electron chemical potentials and the high temperatures. Because of their relatively lower abundance compared to electrons, their role has so far been ignored in numerical simulations of stellar core collapse and NS formation. However, the appearance of muons softens the NS equation of state, triggers faster NS contraction, and thus leads to higher luminosities and mean energies of the emitted neutrinos. This strengthens the postshock heating by neutrinos and can facilitate explosions by the neutrino-driven mechanism.

Charged-current weak interaction processes in hot and dense matter and its impact on the spectra of neutrinos emitted from protoneutron star cooling.

We perform three-flavor Boltzmann neutrino transport radiation hydrodynamics simulations covering a period of 3 s after the formation of a protoneutron star in a core-collapse supernova explosion. Our results show that a treatment of charged-current neutrino interactions in hot and dense matter as suggested by Reddy et al. [Phys. Rev. D 58, 013009 (1998)] has a strong impact on the luminosities and spectra of the emitted neutrinos. When compared with simulations that neglect mean-field effects on the neutrino opacities, we find that the luminosities of all neutrino flavors are reduced while the spectral differences between electron neutrinos and antineutrinos are increased. Their magnitude depends on the equation of state and in particular on the symmetry energy at subnuclear densities. These modifications reduce the proton-to-nucleon ratio of the outflow, increasing slightly their entropy. They are expected to have a substantial impact on nucleosynthesis in neutrino-driven winds, even though they do not result in conditions that favor an r process. Contrary to previous findings, our results show that the spectra of electron neutrinos remain substantially different from those of other (anti)neutrino flavors during the entire deleptonization phase of the protoneutron star. The obtained luminosity and spectral changes are also expected to have important consequences for neutrino flavor oscillations and neutrino detection on Earth.