An Open-Source Neutrino Radiation Hydrodynamics Code for Core-Collapse Supernovae

Abstract

We present an open-source update to the spherically-symmetric, general-relativistic hydrodynamics, core-collapse supernova code GR1D (O'Connor & Ott, 2010, CQG, 27, 114103). The source code is available at http://www.GR1Dcode.org. We extend its capabilities to include a fully general relativistic treatment of neutrino transport based on the moment formalisms of Shibata et al., 2011, PTP, 125, 1255 and Cardall et al., 2013, PRD, 87 103004. We pay special attention to implementing and testing numerical methods and approximations that lessen the computational demand of the transport scheme by removing the need to invert large matrices. This is especially important for the implementation and development of moment-like transport methods in two and three dimensions. A critical component of neutrino transport calculations are the neutrino-matter interaction coefficients that describe the production, absorption, scattering, and annihilation of neutrinos. In this article we also describe our open-source, neutrino interaction library NuLib (available at http://www.nulib.org). We believe that an open-source approach to describing these interactions is one of the major steps needed to progress towards robust models of core-collapse supernovae and robust predictions of the neutrino signal. We show, via comparisons to full Boltzmann neutrino transport simulations of core collapse, that our neutrino transport code performs remarkably well. Furthermore, we show that the methods and approximations we employ to increase efficiency do not decrease the fidelity of our results. We also test the ability of our general relativistic transport code to model failed core-collapse supernovae by evolving a 40 solar mass zero-age main sequence mass progenitor to the onset of protoneutron star collapse to a black hole.