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arXiv · 1507.07569

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.

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Sovan Chakraborty, Rasmus Sloth Hansen, Ignacio Izaguirre, Georg Raffelt. 2016-01-18. Self-induced flavor conversion of supernova neutrinos on small scales. https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516%2F2016%2F01%2F028

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