Abstract
As the detection1,2 of a neutrino burst from supernova 1987A one year ago has dramatically illustrated, the flux of neutrinos generated by the collapse of the core of a massive star is truly prodigious. Common lore has it that these neutrinos, because of their weak coupling to matter, pass through all but the iron core and inner silicon shell of the collapsing star with negligible interaction. So far as energy deposition and the explosion mechanism go, this is true but for the nuclear chemistry of the star, we argue that it is not. We draw particular attention to the synthesis of an element whose origin has hitherto been obscure – fluorine – and show that its solar abundance constrains the temperature of muon and tauon neutrinos to values near what is expected from the standard model (8–10 MeV).
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Woosley, S., Haxton, W. Supernova neutrinos, neutral currents and the origin of fluorine. Nature 334, 45–47 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1038/334045a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/334045a0
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