AMReX-Astro / AMReX-Astro/Microphysics

add neutrino losses to aprox13

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Description

This comes out of discussions with Sam Jones, Aron Michel, and @carlnotsagan

We should implement the neutrino losses from the weak reactions. This would mean keeping track of each reaction and what the actual Q value is (subtracting neutrino losses), and evolving an enuc equation that used these Q values.

From Sam:

I think we estimated the neutrino energy losses, and even though they were smaller than 
I had expected, I agree that they're still important.
...
The way I would implement it would be to introduce the Q value (binding energy difference 
between products and reactants) for each reaction, and additionally a Q_neu for the weak 
reactions, which is the average neutrino energy per reaction, Q_neu = eps_neu/lambda, 
where eps_neu and lambda are the neutrino luminosity [MeV/s] and the rate [/s] from the 
LMP tables, respectively. Q_neu is of course 0 for the reactions involving the strong 
nuclear force. Then the energy generation is the sum of the number of times a reaction 
takes place multiplied by (Q-Qneu).

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by locating the aprox13 implementation and the LMP tables referenced in the issue, then trace how reaction rates and energy generation are represented. Determine where the per-reaction Q and Q_neu values belong and how enuc is evolved. Done means weak-reaction neutrino losses are included in the energy generation while strong reactions retain zero Q_neu.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
backend
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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