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Abstract

We calculate the neutrino signal from Population III supermassive star
collapse using a neutrino transfer code originally developed for core collapse
supernovae and massive star collapse. Using this code, we are able to
investigate the supermassive star mass range thought to undergo neutrino
trapping ($\sim 10^4$ M$_\odot$), a mass range which has been neglected by
previous works because of the difficulty of neutrino transfer. For models in
this mass range, we observe a neutrino-sphere with a large radius and low
density compared to typical massive star neutrino-spheres. We calculate the
neutrino light-curve emitted from this neutrino-sphere. The resulting neutrino
luminosity is significantly lower than the results of a previous analytical
model. We briefly discuss the possibility of detecting a neutrino burst from a
supermassive star or the neutrino background from many supermassive stars and
conclude that the former is unlikely with current technology, unless the SMS
collapse is located as close as 1 Mpc, while the latter is also unlikely even
under very generous assumptions. However, the supermassive star neutrino
background is still of interest as it may serve as a source of noise in
proposed dark matter direct detection experiments.