- July 8, 2019, 2:00 pm US/Central
- Curia II
- Mackenzie Warren, Michigan State University
- Sam McDermott
Core-collapse supernovae, the explosive deaths of massive stars, remain
some of the largest computational simulations in astrophysics – requiring
careful treatment of general relativity, magento-hydrodynamics, nuclear
physics, and neutrino transport and interactions. Despite increasing physical
fidelity, modern simulations of core-collapse supernovae still don’t self-
consistently account for the effects of neutrino flavor mixing. Such effects
are thought to have tremendous impact on the resulting neutrino spectra,
nucleosynthesis, and perhaps even the explosion itself. I will discuss our
current understanding of what neutrino flavor mixing phenomena may occur,
current efforts to include flavor mixing in CCSN models, and how
observations of neutrinos from the next galactic supernova may provide
insight into fundamental neutrino physics, such as the neutrino mass
hierarchy.