Enhanced antineutrino emission from $β$ decay in core-collapse supernovae with self-consistent weak decay rates

Abstract

Nuclear weak-interaction rates are known to exert a prominent effect in the late-stages of stellar collapse. Despite their importance, most studies to date on core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) have focused primarily on the effects of electron captures, neglecting $β$~decay contributions. In this work, we present the first CCSNe simulation incorporating global $β$~decay rates from a microscopic theory. These are enabled by a large-scale evaluation of both electron capture and $β$~decay rates, obtained self-consistently utilizing the relativistic energy density functional theory and finite-temperature quasiparticle random-phase approximation. Including $β$ decay leads to a dramatic enhancement of the pre-bounce antineutrino signal as the antineutrino emissivity increases by more than two orders of magnitude and the luminosity by a factor of 50 relative to thermal emission alone, while the average antineutrino energy increases by over 1 MeV. It is expected that these new rates could help us constrain the model uncertainties related to weak-interaction processes, improving the prediction of antineutrino signal during the final stages of stellar death.