Helicity coherence in binary neutron star mergers and nonlinear feedback

Abstract

Neutrino flavor conversion studies based on astrophysical environments usually implement neutrino mixings, neutrino interactions with matter and neutrino self-interactions. In anisotropic media, the most general mean-field treatment includes neutrino mass contributions as well, that introduce a coupling between neutrinos and antineutrinos termed helicity or spin coherence. We discuss resonance conditions for helicity coherence for Dirac and Majorana neutrinos. We explore the role of these mean-field contributions on flavor evolution in the context of a binary neutron star merger remnant. We find that resonance conditions can be satisfied in neutron star merger scenarios while adiabaticity is not sufficient for efficient flavor conversion. We analyse our numerical findings by discussing general conditions to have multiple MSW-like resonances, in presence of non-linear feedback, in astrophysical environments.