Neutrino-nucleus reactions and their role for supernova dynamics and nucleosynthesis

The description of nuclear reactions induced by supernova neutrinos has witnessed significant progress during the recent years. At the energies and momentum transfers relevant for supernova neutrinos neutrino-nucleus cross sections are dominated by allowed transitions, however, often with non-negligible contributions from (first) forbidden transitions. For several nuclei allowed Gamow-Teller strength distributions could be derived from charge-exchange reactions and from inelastic electron scattering data. Importantly the diagonalization shell model has been proven to accurately describe these data and hence became the appropriate tool to calculate the allowed contributions to neutrino-nucleus cross sections for supernova neutrinos. Higher multipole contributions are usually calculated within the framework of the Quasiparticle Random Phase Approximation, which describes the total strength and the position of the giant resonances quite well. This manuscript reviews the recent progress achieved in calculating supernova-relevant neutrino-nucleus cross sections and discusses its verification by data. Moreover, the review summarizes also the impact which neutrino-nucleus reactions have on the dynamics of supernovae and on the associated nucleosynthesis. These include the absorption of neutrinos by nuclei (the inverse of nuclear electron capture which is the dominating weak-interaction process during collapse), inelastic neutrino-nucleus scattering and nuclear de-excitation by neutrino-pair emission. We also discuss the role of neutrino-induced reactions for the recently discovered $\nu p$ process, for the r-process and for the neutrino process, for which neutrino-nucleus reactions have the largest impact. Finally, we briefly review neutrino-nucleus reactions important for the observation of supernova neutrinos by earthbound detectors. (Abridged)Comment: 77 pages, 29 figures, 4 tables, submitted to Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physic

Instability of three dimensional conformally dressed black hole

The three dimensional black hole solution of Einstein equations with negative cosmological constant coupled to a conformal scalar field is proved to be unstable against linear circularly symmetric perturbations.Comment: 5 pages, REVTe

Neutrino–nucleus reactions and nuclear structure

The methods used in the evaluation of the neutrino–nucleus cross section are reviewed. Results are shown for a variety of targets of practical importance. Many of the described reactions are accessible in future experiments with neutrino sources from the pion and muon decays at rest, which might be available at the neutron spallation facilities. Detailed comparison between the experimental and theoretical results would establish benchmarks needed for verification and/or parameter adjustment of the nuclear models. Having a reliable tool for such calculation is of great importance in a variety of applications, e.g. the neutrino oscillation studies, detection of supernova neutrinos, description of the neutrino transport in supernovae and description of the r-process nucleosynthesis

Long-term evolution of massive star explosions

We examine simulations of core-collapse supernovae in spherical symmetry. Our model is based on general relativistic radiation hydrodynamics with three-flavor Boltzmann neutrino transport. We discuss the different supernova phases, including the long-term evolution up to 20 seconds after the onset of explosion during which the neutrino fluxes and mean energies decrease continuously. In addition, the spectra of all flavors become increasingly similar, indicating the change from charged- to neutral-current dominance. Furthermore, it has been shown recently by several groups independently, based on sophisticated supernova models, that collective neutrino flavor oscillations are suppressed during the early mass-accretion dominated post-bounce evolution. Here we focus on the possibility of collective flavor flips between electron and non-electron flavors during the later, on the order of seconds, evolution after the onset of an explosion with possible application for the nucleosynthesis of heavy elements.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, conference proceeding, HANSE 2011 worksho