Neutrino propagation hinders fast pairwise flavor conversions

Abstract

Neutrino flavor conversions may dramatically affect the inner working of compact astrophysical objects as well as the synthesis of the heavier elements. We present the first sophisticated numerical solution of the neutrino flavor conversion within a (2+1+1) dimensional setup: we include the advective term in the neutrino equations of motion and track the flavor evolution in two spatial dimensions, one angular variable, and time. Notably, the advective term hinders the development of neutrino pairwise conversions, if the conditions favoring such conversions (i.e., crossings between the angular distributions of $\nu_e$ and $\bar\nu_e$ or a non-negligible flux of neutrinos traveling backward with respect to the main propagation direction) exist for time scales shorter than the typical time scale of the advective term. As a consequence, fast pairwise conversions can only occur when the conditions favoring flavor conversions are self-sustained and global, such as the ones induced by the lepton emission self-sustained asymmetry (LESA) in core-collapse supernovae. Our work highlights the major impact of the dynamical evolution of the neutrino field on the growth of flavor instabilities and the strong interplay between classical and quantum effects. Critical limitations of the linear stability analysis, used to predict neutrino flavor instabilities, are also pointed out.