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arXiv · 2507.22987

Lepton number crossings are insufficient for flavor instabilities

Damiano F. G. Fiorillo·Georg G. Raffelt
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Abstract

In dense neutrino environments, the mean field of flavor coherence can develop instabilities. A necessary condition is that the flavor lepton number changes sign as a function of energy and/or angle. Whether such a crossing is also sufficient has been a longstanding question. We construct an explicit counterexample: a spectral crossing without accompanying flavor instability, with an even number of crossings being key. This failure is physically understood as Cherenkov-like emission of flavor waves. If flipped-lepton-number neutrinos never dominate among those kinematically allowed to decay, the waves cannot grow.

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Damiano F. G. Fiorillo, Georg G. Raffelt. 2025-07-30. Lepton number crossings are insufficient for flavor instabilities. https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22987

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