Published July 3, 2013 | Version v1
Journal article

Nuclear weak interactions, supernova nucleosynthesis and neutrino oscillation

  • 1. Department of Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo, Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033 (Japan)
  • 2. National Astronomical Observatory, 2-21-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588 (Japan)

Description

We study the nuclear weak response in light-to-heavy mass nuclei and calculate neutrino-nucleus cross sections. We apply these cross sections to the explosive nucleosynthesis in core-collapse supernovae and find that several isotopes of rare elements 7Li, 11B, 138La, 180Ta and several others are predominantly produced by the neutrino-process nucleosynthesis. We discuss how to determine the suitable neutrino spectra of three different flavors and their anti-particles in order to explain the observed solar system abundances of these isotopes, combined with Galactic chemical evolution of the light nuclei and the heavy r-process elements. Light-mass nuclei like 7Li and 11B, which are produced in outer He-layer, are strongly affected by the neutrino flavor oscillation due to the MSW (Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein) effect, while heavy-mass nuclei like 138La, 180Ta and r-process elements, which are produced in the inner O-Ne-Mg layer or the atmosphere of proto-neutron star, are likely to be free from the MSW effect. Using such a different nature of the neutrino-process nucleosynthesis, we study the neutrino oscillation effects on their abundances, and propose a new novel method to determine the unknown neutrino oscillation parameters, θ13 and mass hierarchy, simultaneously. There is recent evidence that some SiC X grains from the Murchison meteorite may contain supernova-produced neutrino-process 11B and 7Li encapsulated in the grains. Combining the recent experimental constraints on θ13, we show that although the uncertainties are still large, our method hints at a marginal preference for an inverted neutrino mass hierarchy for the first time

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/445/1/012024

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Journal of Physics. Conference Series (Online)
Journal Volume
445
Journal Issue
1
Journal Page Range
[6 p.]
ISSN
1742-6596