General relativistic neutrino transport in static post-collapse stellar cores

We examine the effects of general relativity on neutrino transport during the critical shock reheating phase of core collapse supernovae. We derive the equations for general relativistic, static, multi-group, flux-limited diffusion (MGFLD), and use these to modify a Newtonian MGFLD code. The steady-state neutrino distributions calculated by the revised code for several post-collapse stellar cores are compared to those computed with the original Newtonian MGFLD code. The general relativistic transport calculations display the expected reductions in neutrino rms energy and luminosity arising from redshift and curvature effects. Although the effects of general relativity on neutrino transport work against the shock revival, firm conclusions cannot be drawn at this time because of other important general relativistic effects on the structure of the core. Nevertheless, it is clear that modeling with Newtonian transport has little connection to reality.