1994/06/29 by Yong-Zhong Qian, George M. Fuller · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Neutrino Physics Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.51.1479
published as Phys.Rev.D51:1479-1494,1995 · 38 pages, tex, DOE/ER/40561-150-INT94-00-63
arxiv created 1994/06/29 · openalex publication_date 1995/02/15 · arxiv updated 2010/04/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We examine matter-enhanced neutrino flavor transformation (\ensuremathν_\mathrm\ensuremathτ(\mathrm\ensuremathμ)?\ensuremathνe) in the region above the neutrino sphere in type II supernovae. Our treatment explicitly includes contributions to the neutrino-propagation Hamiltonian from neutrino-neutrino forward scattering. A proper inclusion of these contributions shows that they have a completely negligible effect on the range of the \ensuremathν_e\mathrm\ensuremath-\ensuremathν_\mathrm\ensuremathτ(\mathrm\ensuremathμ) vacuum mass-squared difference \ensuremathδm2, and vacuum mixing angle \ensuremathθ or equivalently sin22\ensuremathθ, required for enhanced supernova shock reheating. When neutrino background effects are included, we find that r-process nucleosynthesis from neutrino-heated supernova ejecta remains a sensitive probe of the mixing between a light \ensuremathνe and a \ensuremathν_\mathrm\ensuremathτ(\mathrm\ensuremathμ) with a cosmologically significant mass. Neutrino-neutrino scattering contributions are found to have a generally small effect on the (\ensuremathδm2, sin22\ensuremathθ) parameter region probed by r-process nucleosynthesis. We point out that the nonlinear effects of the neutrino background extend the range of sensitivity of r-process nucleosynthesis to smaller values of \ensuremathδm2.