The impact of electron-capture (EC) cross sections on neutron-rich nuclei on the dynamics of corecollapse during infall and early post-bounce is studied performing spherically symmetric simulations in general relativity using a multigroup scheme for neutrino transport and full nuclear distributions in extended nuclear statistical equilibrium models. We thereby vary the prescription for EC rates on individual nuclei, the nuclear interaction for the EoS, the mass model for the nuclear statistical equilibrium distribution and the progenitor model. In agreement with previous works, we show that the individual EC rates are the most important source of uncertainty in the simulations, while the other inputs only marginally influence the results. A recently proposed analytic formula to extrapolate microscopic results on stable nuclei for EC rates to the high densities and temperatures and the neutron rich region, with a functional form motivated by nuclear-structure data and parameters fitted from large scale shell model calculations, is shown to lead to a sizable (16%) reduction of the electron fraction at bounce compared to more primitive prescriptions for the rates, leading to smaller inner core masses and slower shock propagation. We show that the EC process involves ≈ 130 different nuclear species around 86 Kr mainly in the N = 50 shell closure region, and establish a list of the most important nuclei to be studied in order to constrain the global rates.

Neutrinos play an important role in compact star astrophysics: neutrino-heating is one of the main ingredients in core-collapse supernovae, neutrino-matter interactions determine the composition of matter in binary neutron star mergers and have among others a strong impact on conditions for heavy element nucleosynthesis and neutron star cooling is dominated by neutrino emission except for very old stars. Many works in the last decades have shown that in dense matter medium effects considerably change the neutrino-matter interaction rates, whereas many astrophysical simulations use analytic approximations which are often far from reproducing more complete calculations. In this work we present a scheme which allows to incorporate improved rates for charged current interactions, into simulations and show as an example some results for core-collapse supernovae, where a noticeable difference is found in the location of the neutrinospheres of the low-energy neutrinos in the early post-bounce phase.

We perform simulations of the Kelvin-Helmholtz cooling phase of proto-neutron stars with a new numerical code in spherical symmetry and using the quasi-static approximation. We use for the first time the full set of charged-current neutrino-nucleon reactions, including neutron decay and modified Urca processes, together with the energy-dependent numerical representation for the inclusion of nuclear correlations with random-phase approximation. Moreover, convective motions are taken into account within the mixing-length theory. As we vary the assumptions for computing neutrino-nucleon reaction rates, we show that the dominant effect on the cooling timescale, neutrino signal and composition of the neutrino-driven wind comes from the inclusion of convective motion. Computation of nuclear correlations within the random phase approximation, as compared to mean field approach, has a relatively small impact.

Abstract. This second paper on the Fabry-Perot cavity presents a semi-classical approach, which means that we consider the transition from wave optics to geometrical optics. The basic concepts are the periodic orbits and their stability. For the plano-concave Fabry-Perot cavity in the paraxial approximation, the derivation of the trace formula demonstrates that the spectrum is based only on the axial periodic orbit and its repetitions. Experiments with micro-lasers illustrate the relation to periodic orbits. The methods presented in this paper are not limited to laser cavities and can be applied to a large range of wave systems.

We make extensive numerical studies of masses and radii of proto-neutron stars during the first second after their birth in core-collapse supernova events. We use a quasi-static approach for the computation of proto-neutron star structure, built on parameterized entropy and electron fraction profiles, that are then evolved with neutrino cooling processes. We vary the equation of state of nuclear matter, the proto-neutron star mass and the parameters of the initial profiles, to take into account our ignorance of the supernova progenitor properties. Our results suggest that if masses and radii of a proto-neutron star can be determined in the first second after the birth, e.g. from gravitational wave emission, no information could be obtained on the corresponding cold neutron star and therefore on the cold nuclear equation of state. Similarly, it seems unlikely that any property of the proto-neutron star equation of state (hot and not beta-equilibrated) could be determined either, mostly due to the lack of information on the entropy, or equivalently temperature, distribution in such objects.