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Nucleosynthesis and high-energy astrophysics
(see arXiv:2201.03576, arXiv:2303.00765, arXiv:2310.16823, and arXiv:2405.17409)
Model the thermodynamic conditions required for nucleosynthesis in outflows of black hole-neutron star (BHNS) mergers, binary neutron star (BNS) mergers, and supernovae
Temperature, density, neutron-proton ratio
Does the r-process occur in these outflows?
Quasithermal neutrinos
Ultra heavy UHECRs
What is the r-process?
Rapid neutron-capture process
~100 neutrons captured onto seed nuclei every second
Neutron-capture: abundances increase to the right in this figure
Three peaks (purple lines)
Unstable nuclei decay back to stable nuclei (black line)
Does this occur in supernovae? Compact object mergers? Other sites?
Abundance patterns from supernova outflows
The nuclei synthesized (here, average mass number) depends on the central engine properties like magnetic field and spin
Here, we assume the supernova wind is driven by a protomagnetar
Intermediate-mass nuclei can be synthesized, but very heavy elements from r-process unlikely
Abundance patterns from merger outflows
Heavier nuclei are synthesized in BHNS/BNS merger outflows
Very massive nuclei formed in the dynamical ejecta of mergers
r-process
Massive, unstable nuclei decay and give rise to a kilonova (KN)
The Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background
(see arXiv:2206.05299, arXiv:2306.16076, and arXiv:2310.15254)
The DSNB is the isotropic background of ~10 MeV neutrinos from all past core collapse supernovae
Need to model the rate of core collapse, neutrino emission spectra from supernovae, and detector response
Star formation and core collapse rates
Massive stars undergo core collapse on very short timescales compared to cosmological timescales
So star formation rate ~ core collapse rate
Star formation rate uncertainty is low
Many tracers of star formation measured
Measuring core collapse rate directly is difficult to high redshift and large uncertainties
Quantify the theoretical error
DSNB event rate and flux depends on a number of ingredients whose error we can quantify:
Star formation rate measurements (SFRD)
Neutrino emission in the late-phase (LP)
Fraction of failed supernovae that lead to black holes (BH)
Cosmology (H0) and initial mass function (IMF) assumptions
Detection prospects
DSNB detectable in Super-Kamiokande with gadolinium (SK-Gd) and Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO)
Significantly detected in the 2030s
HK and DUNE will complement these detectors
PyDSNB!
Publicly available code to calculate the flux of DSNB
Green, blue, and orange spectra here created with the code and compared to recent Super-Kamiokande flux upper limits
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