Self-induced flavor conversion of supernova neutrinos on small scales
Abstract
Self-induced flavor conversion of supernova (SN) neutrinos is a generic feature of neutrino-neutrino dispersion. The corresponding run-away modes in flavor space can spontaneously break the original symmetries of the neutrino flux and in particular can spontaneously produce small-scale features as shown in recent schematic studies. However, the unavoidable "multi-angle matter effect" shifts these small-scale instabilities into regions of matter and neutrino density which are not encountered on the way out from a SN. The traditional modes which are uniform on the largest scales are most prone for instabilities and thus provide the most sensitive test for the appearance of self-induced flavor conversion. As a by-product we clarify the relation between the time evolution of an expanding neutrino gas and the radial evolution of a stationary SN neutrino flux. Our results depend on several simplifying assumptions, notably stationarity of the solution, the absence of a "backward" neutrino flux caused by residual scattering, and global spherical symmetry of emission.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1507.07569,
title = {Self-induced flavor conversion of supernova neutrinos on small scales},
author = {Sovan Chakraborty and Rasmus Sloth Hansen and Ignacio Izaguirre and Georg Raffelt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.07569},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
50 pages, 17 figures, minor improvements in the conclusions, references added. Matches version published in JCAP