Tau lepton asymmetry by sterile neutrino emission—moving beyond one-zone supernova models

Abstract

The mixing of active neutrinos with their sterile counterparts with keV mass is known to have a potentially major impact on the energy loss from the supernova core. By relying on a set of three static hydrodynamical backgrounds mimicking the early accretion phase and the Kelvin-Helmoltz cooling phase of a supernova, we develop the first self-consistent, radial- and time-dependent treatment of νs-ντ mixing in the dense stellar core. We follow the flavor evolution by including ordinary matter effects, collisional production of sterile neutrinos, as well as reconversions of sterile states into active ones. The dynamical feedback of the sterile neutrino production on the matter background leads to the development of a ντ-ν̄τ asymmetry (Yντ) that grows in time until it reaches a value larger than 0.15. Our results hint towards significant implications for the supernova physics, and call for a self-consistent modeling of the sterile neutrino transport in the supernova core to constrain the mixing parameters of sterile neutrinos.