Dirac neutrinos in dense matter

Multi-Neutrino Entanglement and Correlations in Dense Neutrino Systems

The time evolution of multi-neutrino entanglement and correlations are studied in two-flavor collective neutrino oscillations, relevant for dense neutrino environments, building upon previous works. Specifically, simulations performed of systems with up to 12 neutrinos using Quantinuum's H1-1 20 qubit trapped-ion quantum computer are used to compute n-tangles, and two- and three-body correlations, probing beyond mean-field descriptions. n-tangle rescalings are found to converge for large system sizes, signaling the presence of genuine multi-neutrino entanglement.

Collective Neutrino Flavor Instability Requires a Crossing

Neutrinos in supernovae, neutron stars, and in the early Universe may change flavor collectively and unstably, due to neutrino-neutrino forward scattering. We prove that, for collective instability to occur, the difference of momentum distributions of two flavors must change sign, i.e., there is a zero crossing. This necessary criterion, which unifies slow and fast instabilities, is valid for Hamiltonian flavor evolution of ultrarelativistic standard model neutrino occupation matrices, including damping due to collisions in the relaxation approximation. It provides a simple but rigorous condition for collective flavor transformations that are believed to be important for stellar dynamics, nucleosynthesis, and neutrino phenomenology.

Neutrino Fast Flavor Conversions in Neutron-Star Postmerger Accretion Disks

A compact accretion disk may be formed in the merger of two neutron stars or of a neutron star and a stellar-mass black hole. Outflows from such accretion disks have been identified as a major site of rapid neutron-capture (r-process) nucleosynthesis and as the source of "red" kilonova emissions following the first observed neutron-star merger GW170817. We present long-term general-relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamic simulations of a typical postmerger accretion disk at initial accretion rates of M[over ˙]∼1  M_{⊙} s^{-1} over 400 ms postmerger. We include neutrino radiation transport that accounts for the effects of neutrino fast flavor conversions dynamically. We find ubiquitous flavor oscillations that result in a significantly more neutron-rich outflow, providing lanthanide and 3rd-peak r-process abundances similar to solar abundances. This provides strong evidence that postmerger accretion disks are a major production site of heavy r-process elements. A similar flavor effect may allow for increased lanthanide production in collapsars.

Fast Flavor Depolarization of Supernova Neutrinos

Flavor-dependent neutrino emission is critical to the evolution of a supernova and its neutrino signal. In the dense anisotropic interior of the star, neutrino-neutrino forward scattering can lead to fast collective neutrino oscillations, which has striking consequences. We present a theory of fast flavor depolarization, explaining how neutrino flavor differences become smaller, i.e., depolarize, due to diffusion to smaller angular scales. We show that transverse relaxation determines the epoch of this irreversible depolarization. We give a method to compute the depolarized fluxes, presenting an explicit formula for simple initial conditions, which can be a crucial input for supernova theory and neutrino phenomenology.

Neutrino propagator in media: spin properties and spectral representation

We have found that in case of propagation of neutrino in the moving matter or external magnetic field there is a fixed 4-axis of polarization, which corresponds to spin projectors commute with a propagator. It means that, states with the definite spin projection on this axis in media have a definite dispersion law. The presence of this axis essentially simplifies the eigenvalue problem and allows one to build spectral representation of the propagator in media.

Self-induced suppression of collective neutrino oscillations in a supernova

We investigate collective flavor oscillations of supernova neutrinos at late stages of the explosion. We first show that the frequently used single-angle (averaged coupling) approximation predicts oscillations close to, or perhaps even inside, the neutrinosphere, potentially invalidating the basic neutrino transport paradigm. Fortunately, we also find that the single-angle approximation breaks down in this regime; in the full multiangle calculation, the oscillations start safely outside the transport region. The new suppression effect is traced to the interplay between the dispersion in the neutrino-neutrino interactions and the vacuum oscillation term.

Self-refraction of supernova neutrinos: mixed spectra and three-flavor instabilities

Neutrinos in a core-collapse supernova undergo coherent flavor transformations in their own background. We explore this phenomenon during the cooling stage of the explosion. Our three-flavor calculations reveal qualitatively new effects compared to a two-flavor analysis. These effects are especially clearly seen for the inverted mass hierarchy: we find a different pattern of spectral "swaps" in the neutrino spectrum and a novel "mixed" spectrum for the antineutrinos. A brief discussion of the relevant physics is presented, including the instability of the two-flavor evolution trajectory, the three-flavor pattern of spectral "swaps," and partial nonadiabaticity of the evolution.

Flavor evolution of the neutronization neutrino burst from an O-Ne-Mg core-collapse supernova

We present results of 3-neutrino flavor evolution simulations for the neutronization burst from an O-Ne-Mg core-collapse supernova. We find that nonlinear neutrino self-coupling engineers a single spectral feature of stepwise conversion in the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy case and in the normal mass hierarchy case, a superposition of two such features corresponding to the vacuum neutrino mass-squared differences associated with solar and atmospheric neutrino oscillations. These neutrino spectral features offer a unique potential probe of the conditions in the supernova environment and may allow us to distinguish between O-Ne-Mg and Fe core-collapse supernovae.

Neutrino mass hierarchy and stepwise spectral swapping of supernova neutrino flavors

We examine a phenomenon recently predicted by numerical simulations of supernova neutrino flavor evolution: the swapping of supernova nu(e) and nu(mu,tau) energy spectra below (above) energy E(C) for the normal (inverted) neutrino mass hierarchy. We present the results of large-scale numerical calculations which show that in the normal neutrino mass hierarchy case, E(C) decreases as the assumed effective 2x2 vacuum nu(e)<==>nu(mu,tau) mixing angle (approximately theta13) is decreased. In contrast, these calculations indicate that E(C) is essentially independent of the vacuum mixing angle in the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy case. With a good neutrino signal from a future galactic supernova, the above results could be used to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy even if theta13 is too small to be measured by terrestrial neutrino oscillation experiments.

Coherent development of neutrino flavor in the supernova environment

We calculate coherent neutrino and antineutrino flavor transformation in the supernova environment, for the first time including self-consistent coupling of intersecting neutrino and antineutrino trajectories. For neutrino mass-squared difference /deltam2/ = 3 x 10(-3) eV2 we find that in the normal (inverted) mass hierarchy the more tangentially-propagating (radially-propagating) neutrinos and antineutrinos can initiate collective, simultaneous medium-enhanced flavor conversion of these particles across broad ranges of energy and propagation direction. Accompanying alterations in neutrino and antineutrino energy spectra and fluxes could affect supernova nucleosynthesis and the expected neutrino signal.