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arXiv · 2101.01226

Fast Flavor Oscillations of Astrophysical Neutrinos with $1,\,2,\,\ldots,\,\infty$ Crossings

Abstract

In the early Universe, as well as in supernovae and merging neutron stars, neutrinos have such high densities that they affect each other and exhibit collective flavor oscillations. A crucial ingredient for fast collective flavor oscillations is that the electron lepton number (ELN) distribution changes its sign as a function of direction, i.e., has a zero crossing. We present a study in two dimensions and show how fast flavor oscillations depend on the ELN and its crossings. We show that a large number of crossings can inhibit flavor oscillations. This may be a natural self-limiting mechanism that stabilizes the flavor content of the dense neutrino gas in a vast majority of scenarios, especially the early Universe, where the angular distributions for all flavors are very similar and crossings occur mainly due to fluctuations.

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Soumya Bhattacharyya, Basudeb Dasgupta. 2021-01-04. Fast Flavor Oscillations of Astrophysical Neutrinos with $1,\,2,\,\ldots,\,\infty$ Crossings. https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2021/07/023

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