Neutrinos from Pre-Collapse Stars

Abstract

We show that in order to make realistic predictions of the nuclear neutrino spectra from pre-collapse stellar cores, one must properly account for nuclear structure effects; often, the dominant nuclear transitions involve excited states, sometimes in both parent and daughter nuclei. We show that the standard technique of producing a neutrino energy spectrum by using a single effective transition structured to fit published neutrino production rates and energy losses will not accurately capture important spectral features.