119042532
Appearance of neutronization peak and decaying supernova neutrinos
Nonradiative neutrino decay, which is not satisfactorily constrained, possibly and significantly changes the detected neutrino signal from galactic supernova explosions. We focus on the appearance of a sharp peak due to a neutronization burst in the time profile; this phenomenon would occur if the original \nu_e, produced at the neutrinosphere and becoming \nu_{2,3} at the stellar surface, decays into a lighter antineutrino state such as \bar\nu_{1,2} coupled to \bar\nu_e. This is due to the fact that the signature of the neutronization burst is common to all numerical simulations. Therefore, the appearance of a neutronization peak in the \bar\nu_e signal, if it were detected, would clearly indicate the nonstandard properties of neutrinos. Using a newly developed formulation that includes flavor conversions inside the supernova envelope and neutrino decay during propagation in a vacuum, we calculate the expected neutrino signal at the detectors; the lifetimes of three modes \tau_{12}, \tau_{13}, and \tau_{23} are taken to be free parameters. We further introduce simple quantities, which represent a peak sharpness of time profile and spectral hardness, and investigate the parameter dependence of these quantities. As the result, it is found that they are quite dependent on the relevant parameters, but it would be quite difficult to distinguish models using the signal obtained by the Super-Kamiokande detector; the future megaton-class detectors would have sufficient sensitivity. We also compare the neutrino decay model with another mechanism, i.e., resonant spin-flavor conversion, which also may give the appearance of a neutronization peak, and conclude that these two independent mechanisms give a different signal and one can be distinguished from the other.
124377961
A neutrino burst and gravitational wave from supernova explosions
43135563
High-energy neutrinos from reverse shocks in choked and successful relativistic jets
Highly relativistic jets are a key element of current gamma-ray burst models, where the jet kinetic energy is converted to radiation energy at optically thin shocks. High-energy neutrinos are also expected, from interactions of protons accelerated in the same shocks. Here we revisit the early evolution of a relativistic jet, while the jet is still inside the star, and investigate its neutrino emission. In particular we study propagation of mildly relativistic and ultrarelativistic jets through a type Ib progenitor, and follow reverse shocks as the jets cross the star. We show that protons can be accelerated to 10^4–10^5 GeV at reverse shocks, and efficiently produce mesons. The mesons experience significant cooling, suppressing subsequent neutrino emission. We show, however, that the neutrino yield from the reverse shock is still reasonably large, especially for low-luminosity and long-duration jets, where meson cooling is less severe. We discuss implications of our results in the context of neutrinos from choked jets, which are completely shock heated and do not break out of the star. From a choked jet with isotropic equivalent energy of 10^53 erg at 10 Mpc, we expect ~20 neutrino events at IceCube.
119067583
Supernova Relic Neutrinos and Observational Implications for Neutrino Oscillation
We investigate the flux and the event rate of supernova relic neutrinos (SRN) at the Super-Kamiokande (SK) detector for various neutrino oscillation models with parameters inferred from recent experimental results. We discuss the detectability of SRN at SK, comparing this SRN flux with other background neutrinos in more detail than previous studies, and it is found that in the energy range 17–25 MeV, ten-year observation might enable us to detect SRN signal (at one sigma level). We also set 90% C.L. upper limit on the SRN flux for various oscillation models using the recently released observational result by SK. In addition, we propose that the SRN observation can be used to set strong constraints on the neutrino decay models. Because of the long distance scale from cosmological supernovae to the Earth, SRN have possibility to provide much stronger limit than the present one obtained from solar neutrino observation. In the near future, further reduced upper limit is actually expected, when the current SK data are reanalyzed using some technique to reduce background events against the SRN signals. It is expected that the reduced upper limit is sufficient to provide useful implications for neutrino oscillation and decaying neutrinos.
125701625
Gamma-ray burst neutrino background and star formation history in the universe
Abstract We estimate the flux of the GRB neutrino background and compute the event rate at SK and TITAND in the collapsar model, assuming that GRB formation rate is proportional to the star formation rate. We find that the predicted background neutrino flux is highly sensitive to unknown model parameters, mainly to the mass accretion rate, to the fraction of disk energy emitted in thermal neutrinos (as opposed to emission through electromagnetic processes), and to the fraction of collapsar events leading to GRBs. The predicted neutrino flux varies over many orders of magnitude as the values of unknown model parameters are varied. We investigate the detection possibility of thermal neutrinos from collapsars which lead to GRBs by TITAND. We find that the GRB neutrino background might be detected by TITAND within ∼ 10 yrs only for the optimistic cases in which the average mass-accretion rate is high (≥ a few M ⊙ s −1 ), and the probability that one collapsar generates a GRB is high ( φ = 0.5 − 1.0).
216052179
Constraints on the annihilation cross section of dark matter particles from anisotropies in the diffuse gamma-ray background measured with Fermi-LAT
Annihilation of dark matter particles in cosmological halos (including the halo of the Milky Way) contributes to the diffuse gamma-ray background (DGRB). As this contribution will appear anisotropic in the sky, one can use the angular power spectrum of anisotropies in the DGRB to constrain the properties of dark matter particles. By comparing the updated analytic model of the angular power spectrum of the DGRB from dark matter annihilation with the power spectrum recently measured from the 22-month data of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT), we place upper limits on the annihilation cross section of dark matter particles as a function of dark matter masses. We find that the current data exclude (σv)≳10−25  cm3 s−1 for annihilation into bb¯ at the dark matter mass of 10 GeV, which is a factor of 3 times larger than the canonical cross section. The limits are weaker for larger dark matter masses. The limits can be improved further with more Fermi-LAT data as well as by using the power spectrum at lower multipoles (l≲150), which are currently not used due to a potential Galactic foreground contamination.
123111129
Muon Capture in CHPT
15824677
Electroweak processes of the deuteron in effective field theory
We review our recent calculations of electroweak processes involving the deuteron, based on pionless effective field theory with dibaryon fields. These calculations are concerned with neutron-neutron fusion and np -> d gamma at BBN energies.
10054578
Capture rate and neutron helicity asymmetry for ordinary muon capture on hydrogen
Applying heavy-baryon chiral perturbation theory to ordinary muon capture (OMC) on a proton, we calculate the capture rate and neutron helicity asymmetry up to nextto-next-to-leading order. For the singlet hyperfine state, we obtain the capture rate 0 = 695 sec −1 while, for the triplet hyperfine state, we obtain the capture rate 1 = 11.9 sec −1 and the neutron asymmetry α1 = 0.93. If the existing formalism is used to relate these atomic capture rates to liq, the OMC rate in liquid hydrogen, then liq corresponding to our improved values of 0 and 1 is found to be significantly larger than the experimental value, primarily due to the updated larger value of gA. We argue that this apparent difficulty may be correlated to the specious anomaly recently reported for � − + p → n + νµ + γ, and we suggest a possibility to remove these two “problems” simply and simultaneously by reexamining the molecular physics input that underlies the conventional analysis of liq.
119100730
Hadronic weak interaction in the two-nucleon system with effective field theories
Abstract Weak interactions in two-nucleon system at low energies are explored in the framework of effective field theory. We review our resent calculations of parity-violating observables in radiative neutron capture on a proton at threshold where both pionful and pionless theories are employed.
15737183
Analysis of ordinary and radiative muon capture in liquid hydrogen
The experimental data on the ordinary muon capture (OMC) rate and the partial branching ratio of radiative muon capture (RMC) in liquid hydrogen are simultaneously analyzed using theoretical estimates for the atomic OMC rates obtained in chiral perturbation theory using the most recent physical constants. Since both data have been obtained in a liquid hydrogen target, we reexamine the formulas for relating the atomic OMC and RMC rates to the liquid hydrogen OMC and RMC rates, respectively. Although the analysis is influenced significantly by the ambiguity in the molecular state population, we can conclude that, while the OMC data can be reproduced, it is not possible to explain the OMC and RMC data simultaneously.