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Manu George

Publications and source records attributed to Manu George.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2024

Evolution and the quasistationary state of collective fast neutrino flavor conversion in three dimensions without axisymmetry

We investigate in this work the evolution of the collective fast neutrino flavor conversion (FFC) in a three dimensional (3D) cubic box with periodic boundary condition for three different neutrino angular distributions that are axially asymmetric. We find that the system evolves toward a quasistationary state where the angular distribution of the spatially averaged neutrino electron-minus-muon lepton number (ELN) does not contain any crossings. In the quasistationary state, near flavor equilibration is achieved in one angular domain enclosed by the initial ELN angular crossing contour, similar to the conclusion derived based on simplified one dimensional (1D) system with axially symmetric neutrino angular distributions. We have also performed additional simulations in coordinates where the initial first ELN angular moment has only one nonvanishing spatial component by using the original axially asymmetric ELN angular distributions as well as the corresponding axisymmetric ELN distributions, and find interesting similarity between these two sets. Finally, we propose three different analytical prescriptions generalized from earlier 1D models to 3D models, and evaluate their performances in predicting the post-FFC moments. Our findings suggest that further development of effective classical transport model in multidimensions to capture the effect of FFC is promising.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2024

Robust integration of fast flavor conversions in classical neutrino transport

The quantum kinetic evolution of neutrinos in dense environments, such as the core-collapse supernovae or the neutron star mergers, can result in fast flavor conversion (FFC), presenting a significant challenge to achieving robust astrophysical modeling of these systems. Recent works that directly simulate the quantum kinetic transport of neutrinos in localized domains have suggested that the asymptotic outcome of FFCs can be modeled by simple analytical prescriptions when coarse grained over a size much larger than the FFC length scale. In this Letter, by leveraging such a scale separation, we incorporate the analytical prescriptions into global simulations that solve the classical neutrino transport equation including collisions and advection under spherical symmetry. We demonstrate that taking this approach allows to obtain results that quantitatively agree with those directly from the corresponding global quantum kinetic simulations and precisely capture the collisional feedback effect for cases where the FFC happens inside the neutrinosphere. Notably, the effective scheme does not require resolving the FFC time and length scales, hence only adds negligible computational overhead to classical transport. Our work highlights that efficient and robust integration of FFCs in classical neutrino transport used in astrophysical simulation can be feasible.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2024

Fast neutrino flavor conversions in a supernova: Emergence, evolution, and effects

Fast flavor conversions (FFCs) of neutrinos, which can occur in core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe), are multiangle effects. They depend on the angular distribution of the neutrino's electron lepton number (ELN). In this work, we present a comprehensive study of the FFCs by solving the multienergy and multiangle quantum kinetic equations with an extended set of collisional weak processes based on a static and spherically symmetric CCSN matter background profile. We investigate the emergence and evolution of FFCs in models featuring different ELN angular distributions, considering scenarios with two and three neutrino flavors. The spectrogram method is utilized to illustrate the small-scale spatial structure, and we show that this structure of neutrino flavor coherence and number densities in the nonlinear regime is qualitatively consistent with the dispersion relation analysis. On the coarse-grained level, we find that different asymptotic states can be achieved following the FFCs depending on the locations and shapes of the ELN distributions, despite sharing a common feature of the elimination of the ELN angular crossing. While equilibration among different neutrino flavors may be achieved immediately after the prompt FFCs, it is not a general outcome of the asymptotic state, as subsequent feedback effects from collisional neutrino-matter interactions come into play, particularly for cases where FFCs occur inside the neutrinosphere. The impacts of FFCs and the feedback effect on the net neutrino heating rates, the equilibrium electron fraction of CCSN matter, and the free-streaming neutrino energy spectra are quantitatively assessed. Other aspects including the impact of the vacuum term and the coexistence with other type of flavor instabilities are also discussed.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2023

Evaluating approximate asymptotic distributions for fast neutrino flavor conversions in a periodic 1D box

The fast flavor conversions (FFCs) of neutrinos generally exist in core-collapse supernovae and binary neutron-star merger remnants, and can significantly change the flavor composition and affect the dynamics and nucleosynthesis processes. Several analytical prescriptions were proposed recently to approximately explain or predict the asymptotic outcome of FFCs for systems with different initial or boundary conditions, with the aim for providing better understandings of FFCs and for practical implementation of FFCs in hydrodynamic modeling. In this work, we obtain the asymptotic survival probability distributions of FFCs in a survey over thousands of randomly sampled initial angular distributions by means of numerical simulations in one-dimensional boxes with the periodic boundary condition. We also propose improved prescriptions that guarantee the continuity of the angular distributions after FFCs. Detailed comparisons and evaluation of all these prescriptions with our numerical survey results are performed. The survey dataset is made publicly available to inspire the exploration and design for more effective methods applicable to realistic hydrodynamic simulations.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2022

Evolution of collisional neutrino flavor instabilities in spherically symmetric supernova models

We implement a multi-group and discrete-ordinate neutrino transport model in spherical symmetry which allows to simulate collective neutrino oscillations by including realistic collisional rates in a self-consistent way. We utilize this innovative model, based on strategic parameter rescaling, to study a recently proposed collisional flavor instability caused by the asymmetry of emission and absorption rates between $\nu_e$ and $\bar\nu_e$ for four different static backgrounds taken from different stages in a core-collapse supernova simulation. Our results confirm that collisional instabilities generally exist around the neutrinosphere during the SN accretion and post-accretion phase, as suggested by [arXiv:2104.11369]. However, the growth and transport of flavor instabilities can only be fully captured by models with global simulations as done in this work. With minimal ingredient to trigger collisional instabilities, we find that the flavor oscillations and transport mainly affect (anti)neutrinos of heavy lepton flavors around their decoupling sphere, which then leave imprints on their energy spectra in the free-streaming regime. For electron (anti)neutrinos, their properties remain nearly intact. We also explore various effects due to the decoherence from neutrino-nucleon scattering, artificially enhanced decoherence from emission and absorption, neutrino vacuum mixing, and inhomogeneous matter profile, and discuss the implication of our work.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2022

Code Comparison for Fast Flavor Instability Simulation

The fast flavor instability (FFI) is expected to be ubiquitous in core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers. It rapidly shuffles neutrino flavor in a way that could impact the explosion mechanism, neutrino signals, mass outflows, and nucleosynthesis. The variety of initial conditions and simulation methods employed in simulations of the FFI prevent an apples-to-apples comparison of the results. We simulate a standardized test problem using five independent codes and verify that they are all faithfully simulating the underlying quantum kinetic equations under the assumptions of axial symmetry and homogeneity in two directions. We quantify the amount of numerical error in each method and demonstrate that each method is superior in at least one metric of this error. We make the results publicly available to serve as a benchmark.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2022

COSE$\nu$: A Collective Oscillation Simulation Engine for Neutrinos

We introduce the implementation details of the simulation code \cosenu, which numerically solves a set of non-linear partial differential equations that govern the dynamics of neutrino collective flavor conversions. We systematically provide the details of both the finite difference method supported by Kreiss-Oliger dissipation and the finite volume method with seventh order weighted essentially non-oscillatory scheme. To ensure the reliability of the code, we perform the comparison of the simulation results with theoretically obtainable solutions. In order to understand and characterize the error accumulation behavior of the implementations when neutrino self-interactions are switched on, we also analyze the evolution of the deviation of the conserved quantities for different values of simulation parameters. We report the performance of our code with both CPUs and GPUs. The public version of the \cosenu~package is available at \url{https://github.com/COSEnu/COSEnu}.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2021

Collective fast neutrino flavor conversions in a 1D box: Initial condition and long-term evolution

We perform numerical simulations of fast collective neutrino flavor conversions in an one-dimensional box mimicking a system with the periodic boundary condition in one spatial direction and translation symmetry in the other two dimensions. We evolve the system over several thousands of the characteristic timescale (inverse of the interaction strength) with different initial $\barν_e$ to $ν_e$ number density ratios and different initial seed perturbations. We find that small scale structures are formed due to the interaction of the flavor waves. This results in nearly flavor depolarization in a certain neutrino phase space, when averaged over the entire box. Specifically, systems with initially equal number of $ν_e$ and $\barν_e$ can reach full flavor depolarization for the entire neutrino electron lepton number ($ν$ELN) angular spectra. For systems with initially unequal $ν_e$ and $\barν_e$, flavor depolarization can only be reached in one side of the $ν$ELN spectra, dictated by the net neutrino $e-x$ lepton number conservation. Quantitatively small differences depending on the initial perturbations are also found when different perturbation seeds are applied. Our numerical study here provides new insights for efforts aiming to include impact of fast flavor conversions in astrophysical simulations while calls for better analytical understanding accounting for the evolution of fast flavor conversions.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2020

Fast neutrino flavor conversion, ejecta properties, and nucleosynthesis in newly-formed hypermassive remnants of neutron-star mergers

Neutrinos emitted in the coalescence of two neutron stars affect the dynamics of the outflow ejecta and the nucleosynthesis of heavy elements. In this work, we analyze the neutrino emission properties and the conditions leading to the growth of flavor instabilities in merger remnants consisting of a hypermassive neutron star and an accretion disk during the first 10 ms after the merger. The analyses are based on hydrodynamical simulations that include a modeling of neutrino emission and absorption effects via the "Improved Leakage-Equilibration-Absorption Scheme" (ILEAS). We also examine the nucleosynthesis of the heavy elements via the rapid neutron-capture process (r-process) inside the material ejected during this phase. The dominant emission of $\barν_e$ over $ν_e$ from the merger remnant leads to favorable conditions for the occurrence of fast pairwise flavor conversions of neutrinos, independent of the chosen equation of state or the mass ratio of the binary. The nucleosynthesis outcome is very robust, ranging from the first to the third r-process peaks. In particular, more than $10^{-5}$ $M_\odot$ of strontium are produced in these early ejecta that may account for the GW170817 kilonova observation. We find that the amount of ejecta containing free neutrons after the $r$-process freeze-out, which may power early-time UV emission, is reduced by roughly a factor of 10 when compared to simulations that do not include weak interactions. Finally, the potential flavor equipartition between all neutrino flavors is mainly found to affect the nucleosynthesis outcome in the polar ejecta within $\lesssim 30^\circ$, by changing the amount of the produced iron-peak and first-peak nuclei, but it does not alter the lanthanide mass fraction therein.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2017

Neutrino induced vorticity, Alfven waves and the normal modes

We consider plasma consisting of electrons and ions in presence of a background neutrino gas and develop the magneto hydrodynamic equations for the system. We show that electron neutrino interaction can induce vorticity in the plasma even in the absence of any electromagnetic perturbations if the background neutrino density is left-right asymmetric. This induced vorticity support a new kind of Alfvén wave whose velocity depends on both the external magnetic field and on the neutrino asymmetry. The normal mode analysis show that in the presence of neutrino background the Alfvén waves can have different velocities. We also discuss our results in the context of dense astrophysical plasma such as magnetars and show that the difference in the Alfvén velocities can be used to explain the observed pulsar kick. We discuss also the relativistic generalization of electron fluid in presence of asymmetric neutrino background.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2017

Shear viscosity $η$ to electrical conductivity $σ_{el}$ ratio for an anisotropic QGP

We study the transport properties of strongly interacting matter in the context of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collision experiments. We calculate the transport coefficients viz. shear viscosity ($η$) and electrical conductivity ($σ_{\rm{el}}$) of the quark-gluon plasma phase in the presence of momentum anisotropy arising from different expansion rates of the medium in longitudinal and transverse direction. We solve the relativistic Boltzmann kinetic equation in relaxation time approximation to calculate the shear viscosity and electrical conductivity. The calculations are performed within the quasiparticle model to estimate these transport coefficients and discuss the connection between them. We also compare the electrical conductivity results calculated from the quasiparticle model with the ideal case. We compare our results with the corresponding results obtained in the different lattice as well as model calculations.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2016

Electromagnetic instability induced by neutrino interaction

We consider the generation and evolution of magnetic field in a primordial plasma at temperature T < 1 MeV in presence of asymmetric neutrino background i.e. the number densities of right- handed and left-handed neutrinos are not same. Semi-classical equations of motion of a charged fermion are derived using the effective low-energy Lagrangian. It is shown that the spin degree of freedom of the charged fermion couples with the neutrino background. Using this kinetic equation we study the collective modes of the plasma. We find that there exist an unstable mode. This instability is closely related with the instability induced by chiral-anomaly in high temperature T > 80 TeV plasma where right and left-handed electrons are out of equilibrium. We find that at the temperatures below the neutrino decoupling the instability can produce magnetic field of 10 Gauss in the Universe. We discuss cosmological implications of the results.

hep-ph↗