Abstract
Despite being a well understood phenomenon in the context of current terrestrial experiments, neutrino flavor conversions in dense astrophysical environments probably represent one of the most challenging open problems in neutrino physics. Apart from being theoretically interesting, such a problem has several phenomenological implications in cosmology and in astrophysics, including the primordial nucleosynthesis of light elements abundance and other cosmological observables, nucleosynthesis of heavy nuclei, and the explosion of massive stars. In this review, we briefly summarize the state of the art on this topic, focusing on three environments: early Universe, core-collapse supernovae, and compact binary mergers.
Highlights
High-Density Astrophysical and Neutrino flavor conversions, or oscillations, are a genuine quantum mechanical phenomenon, for which a flavor eigenstate να (α = e, μ, τ) is converted to νβ (β 6= α) during propagation, due to it being an admixture of different mass eigenstates νi (i = 1, 2, 3)
A full understanding of these phenomenona is mandatory for a correct interpretation of both the corresponding neutrino signals and the astrophysical processes developing in these environments
The early Universe represents a peculiar environment for testing nonlinear neutrino oscillations in high-density conditions
Summary
High-Density Astrophysical and Neutrino flavor conversions, or oscillations, are a genuine quantum mechanical phenomenon, for which a flavor eigenstate να (α = e, μ, τ) is converted to νβ (β 6= α) during propagation, due to it being an admixture of different mass (or propagation) eigenstates νi (i = 1, 2, 3). When the interactions among neutrinos are no longer negligible, their flavor evolution becomes deeply non-linear and cannot be treated in the standard way used in the context of terrestrial experiments The environments where such conditions occur are the early Universe, core-collapse supernovae, and merger events between two compact astrophysical objects.
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