Realistic Neutrino Opacities for Supernova Simulations With Correlations and Weak Magnetism

Abstract

Advances in neutrino transport allow realistic neutrino interactions to be incorporated into supernova simulations. We add tensor couplings to relativistic RPA calculations of neutrino opacities. Our results reproduce free-space neutrino-nucleon cross sections at low density, including weak magnetism and recoil corrections. In addition, our opacities are thermodynamically consistent with relativistic mean field equations of state. We find antineutrino mean free paths that are considerably larger then those for neutrinos. This difference depends little on density. In a supernova, this difference could lead to an average energy of $\barν_μ$ that is larger than that for $ν_μ$ by an amount that is comparable to the energy difference between $ν_μ$ and $\barν_e$