Neutrino Oscillations in Neutrino-Dominated Accretion Around Rotating Black Holes

Abstract

In the binary-driven hypernova model of long gamma-ray bursts, a carbon–oxygen star explodes as a supernova in the presence of a neutron star binary companion in close orbit. Hypercritical (i.e., highly super-Eddington) accretion of the ejecta matter onto the neutron star sets in, making it reach the critical mass with consequent formation of a Kerr black hole. We have recently shown that, during the accretion process onto the neutron star, fast neutrino flavor oscillations occur. Numerical simulations of the above system show that a part of the ejecta stays bound to the newborn Kerr black hole, leading to a new process of hypercritical accretion. We address herein, also for this phase of the binary-driven hypernova, the occurrence of neutrino flavor oscillations given the extreme conditions of high density (up to 1012 g cm−3) and temperatures (up to tens of MeV) inside this disk. We estimate the behavior of the electronic and non-electronic neutrino content within the two-flavor formalism (νeνx) under the action of neutrino collective effects by neutrino self-interactions. We find that in the case of inverted mass hierarchy, neutrino oscillations inside the disk have frequencies between ∼(105–109) s−1, leading the disk to achieve flavor equipartition. This implies that the energy deposition rate by neutrino annihilation (ν+ν¯→e−+e+) in the vicinity of the Kerr black hole is smaller than previous estimates in the literature not accounting for flavor oscillations inside the disk. The exact value of the reduction factor depends on the νe and νx optical depths but it can be as high as ∼5. The results of this work are a first step toward the analysis of neutrino oscillations in a novel astrophysical context, and as such, deserve further attention.