Production of unstable heavy neutrinos in proto-neutron stars
Metadata
Show full item recordEditorial
Elsevier
Materia
Neutrinos Proto-neutron stars Energy
Date
2015-12-17Referencia bibliográfica
Albertus Torres, C.; Masip Mellado, M.; Pérez-García, M.A. Production of unstable heavy neutrinos in proto-neutron stars. Physics Letters B, 751: 209-214 (2015). [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/49233]
Sponsorship
Open Access funded by SCOAP³ - Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics.; This work has been supported by MINECO of Spain (FPA2013-47836, FIS2012-30926) and Consolider-IngenioMul-tidarkCSD2009-00064) and by Junta de Andalucía (FQM225, FQM101,3048).Abstract
We discuss the production of a class of heavy sterile neutrinos nu(h) in proto-neutron stars. The neutrinos, of mass around 50 MeV, have a negligible mixing with the active species but relatively large dimension-5 electromagnetic couplings. In particular, a magnetic dipole moment mu approximate to 10(-6) GeV-1 implies that they are thermally produced through e(+)e(-) -> (nu) over bar (h)nu(h) in the early phase of the core collapse, whereas a heavy-light transition moment mu(tr) approximate to 10(-8) GeV-1 allows their decay nu(h) -> nu i gamma with a lifetime around 10(-3) s. This type of electromagnetic couplings has been recently proposed to explain the excess of electron-like events in baseline experiments. We show that the production and decay of these heavy neutrinos would transport energy from the central regions of the star to distances d approximate to 400 km, providing a very efficient mechanism to enhance the supernova shock front and heat the material behind it.