Implications of conservation laws and ergodicity for neutrino flavor instability

2024/02/14 by Lucas Johns, Johns, Lucas · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Neutrino Physics Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2402.08896

openalex publication_date 2024/02/14 · openalex created_date 2024/02/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Collective neutrino flavor instabilities are believed to be prevalent in core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers. This work establishes two points related to instability, both in the spirit of developing a more fundamental understanding of collective flavor dynamics. First, a conservation law related to lepton number implies that spectral crossings are necessary for instability. Second, the most permissive application of the ergodic hypothesis to neutrino flavor evolution implies that spectral crossings are in fact sufficient for instability. We also discuss flavor thermalization and energy conservation in relation to ergodicity.

Cited by

• Neutrino-Mass-Driven Instabilities as the Earliest Flavor Conversion in Supernovae
• Lepton number crossings are insufficient for flavor instabilities
• Dispersion relation of the neutrino plasma: Unifying fast, slow, and collisional instabilities

Related

• Energy Dependence of Flavor Instabilities Stemming from Crossings in the Neutrino Flavor Lepton Number Angular Distribution
• Sufficient and Necessary Conditions for Collective Neutrino Instability: Fast, Slow, and Mixed
• Lepton number crossings are insufficient for flavor instabilities
• Neutrino-Mass-Driven Instabilities as the Earliest Flavor Conversion in Supernovae
• Collisional flavor pendula and neutrino quantum thermodynamics