The r-Process in the Proto-Neutron-Star Winds with Anisotropic Neutrino Emission

Abstract

The astrophysical origin of the r-process nuclei is still unknown. Even the most promising scenario, the neutrino-driven winds from a nascent neutron star, encounters severe difficulties in obtaining requisite entropy and short dynamic timescale for the r-process. In this study, the effect of anisotropy in neutrino emission from a proto-neutron star surface is examined with semi-analytic neutrino-driven wind models. The increase of neutrino number density in the wind owing to the anisotropy is modeled schematically by enhancing the effective neutrino luminosity. It is shown that the neutrino heating rate from neutrino-antineutrino pair annihilation into electron-positron pairs can significantly increase owing to the anisotropy and play a dominant role for the heating of wind material. A factor of five increase in the effective neutrino luminosity results in 50% higher entropy and a factor of ten shorter dynamic timescale owing to this enhanced neutrino heating. The nucleosynthesis calculations show that this change is enough for the robust r-process, producing the third abundance peak A = 195 and beyond. Future multi-dimensional studies with accurate neutrino transport will be needed if such anisotropy relevant for the current scenario (more than a factor of a few) is realized during the wind phase (~1-10 s).Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter