Flavor Conversion Research Articles

On possibility of determining neutrino mass hierarchy by the charged-current and neutral-current events of supernova neutrinos in scintillation detectors

One of the unresolved mysteries in neutrino physics is the neutrino mass hierarchy. We present a new method to determine neutrino mass hierarchy by comparing the events of inverse beta decays (IBD), {bar{nu }}_e + prightarrow n + e^+, and neutral current (NC) interactions, nu ({overline{nu }}) + prightarrow nu ({overline{nu }}) + p, of supernova neutrinos from accretion and cooling phases in scintillation detectors. Supernova neutrino flavor conversions depend on the neutrino mass hierarchy. On account of Mikheyev–Smirnov–Wolfenstein effects, the full swap of the {bar{nu }}_e flux with the {bar{nu }}_x (x=mu ,~tau ) one occurs in the inverted hierarchy, while such a swap does not occur in the normal hierarchy. In consequence, the ratio of high energy IBD events to NC events for the inverted hierarchy is higher than in the normal hierarchy. Since the luminosity of {bar{nu }}_e is larger than that of nu _x in accretion phase while the luminosity of {bar{nu }}_e becomes smaller than that of nu _x in cooling phase, we calculate this ratio for both accretion and cooling phases. By analyzing the change of this event ratio from accretion phase to cooling phase, one can determine the neutrino mass hierarchy.

Medium-indused modification of kaons spectra measured in SIDIS at HERMES

The predicted high sensitivity of the nuclear modification factor for K– in SIDIS due to the QCD based effect of medium-induced flavour conversion in the fragmentation function is studied at HERMES experiment. Unlike π+, π– and K+ nuclear modification factor for K– is assumed to increase at high value of Bjorken variable xB and a hadron fraction energy z. The experimental signature of this phenomenon is an enhanced K– nuclear modification factor compared with those of K+ for high xB and z range. The z spectra of nuclear attenuation ratios for charged kaons in different slices of xB extracted on Ne, Kr and Xe targets will be presented and discussed.

Collective neutrino oscillations and detectabilities in failed supernovae

We investigate the collective neutrino oscillations under the three flavor multi-angle approximation in a spherically symmetric simulation of failed supernovae. A failed supernova emits high neutrino fluxes in a short time, while intense accretion proceeds with high electron density enough to experience re-collapse into a black hole. Our results show that matter-induced effects completely dominate over neutrino self-interaction effects and multi-angle matter suppression occurs at all time snapshots we studied. These facts suggest us that only MSW resonances affect the neutrino flavor conversions in failed supernovae and simple spectra will be observed at neutrino detectors. We also estimate the neutrino event rate in current and future neutrino detectors from a source at 10 kpc as a Galactic event. The time evolution of neutrino detection could provide information about the dense and hot matter and constrain the neutrino mass ordering problem.

Simple method of diagnosing fast flavor conversions of supernova neutrinos

Neutrinos emitted from a supernova may undergo flavor conversions almost immediately above the core, with possible consequences for supernova dynamics and nucleosynthesis. However, the precise conditions for such fast conversions can be difficult to compute and require knowledge of the full angular distribution of the flavor-dependent neutrino fluxes, that is not available in typical supernova simulations. In this paper, we show that the overall flavor evolution is qualitatively similar to the growth of a so-called `zero mode', determined by the background matter and neutrino densities, which can be reliably predicted using only the second angular moments of the electron lepton number distribution, i.e., the difference in the angular distributions of $\nu_e$ and $\bar{\nu}_e$ fluxes. We propose that this zero mode, which neither requires computing the full Green's function nor a detailed knowledge of the angular distributions, may be useful for a preliminary diagnosis of possible fast flavor conversions in supernova simulations with modestly resolved angular distributions

Model-independent diagnostic of self-induced spectral equalization versus ordinary matter effects in supernova neutrinos

Self-induced flavor conversions near the supernova (SN) core can make the fluxes for different neutrino species become almost equal, potentially altering the dynamics of the SN explosion and washing out all further neutrino oscillation effects. We present a new model-independent analysis strategy for the next galactic SN signal that will distinguish this flavor equalization scenario from a matter effects only scenario during the SN accretion phase. Our method does not rely on fitting or modelling the energy-dependent fluences of the different species to a known function, but rather uses a model-independent comparison of charged-current and neutral-current events at large next-generation underground detectors. Specifically, we advocate that the events due to elastic scattering on protons in a scintillator detector, which is insensitive to oscillation effects and can be used as a model-independent normalization, should be compared with the events due to inverse beta decay of $\bar\nu_e$ in a water Cherenkov detector and/or the events due to charged-current interactions of $\nu_e$ in an Argon detector. The ratio of events in these different detection channels allow one to distinguish a complete flavor equalization from a pure matter effect, for either of the neutrino mass orderings, as long as the spectral differences among the different species are not too small.

Fast neutrino flavor conversion: Roles of dense matter and spectrum crossing

The flavor conversion of a neutrino usually occurs at densities $\lesssim G_F^{-1} \omega$, whether in the ordinary matter or the neutrino medium, and on time/distance scales of order $\omega^{-1}$, where $G_F$ is the Fermi weak coupling constant and $\omega$ is the vacuum oscillation frequency of the neutrino. In 2005 Sawyer and more recently both he and other groups have shown that neutrino flavor conversions can occur on scales much shorter than $\omega^{-1}$ in a very dense, anisotropic neutrino gas such as that in a core-collapse supernova or a binary neutron star merger. It has also been suggested that the fast neutrino flavor conversion require a crossing in the electron lepton number (ELN) angular distribution or spectrum. We study a few simple analytical models with which we elucidate the roles of the dense matter and the ELN spectrum crossing in neutrino fast flavor conversions. We show that a large matter density can induce fast neutrino flavor conversions in certain astrophysical scenarios such as at the early epoch of a core-collapse supernova.

Supernova neutrinos: Flavor conversion independent of their mass

In extremely dense neutrino environments like in supernova core, the neutrino-neutrino refraction may give rise to self-induced flavor conversion. These neutrino flavor oscillations are well understood from the idea of the exponentially growing modes of the interacting oscillators in the flavor space. Until recently, the growth rates of these modes were found to be of the order of the vacuum oscillation frequency $$\Delta m^2/2E$$ [ $$\mathcal {O}(1~\mathrm{km}^{-1})$$ ] and were considered slow growing. However, in the last couple of years it was found that if the system was allowed to have different zenith-angle distributions for the emitted $$\nu _e$$ and $$\bar{\nu }_e$$ beams then the fastest growing modes of the interacting oscillators grew at the order of $$\mu =\sqrt{2} G_\mathrm{F}n_{\nu }$$ , a typical $$\nu $$ – $$\nu $$ interaction energy [ $$\mathcal {O}(10^5~\mathrm{km}^{-1})$$ ]. Thus the growth rates are very large in comparison to the so-called ‘slow oscillations’ and can result in neutrino flavor conversion on a much faster scale. In fact, the point that the growth rates are no longer dependent on the vacuum oscillation frequency $$\Delta m^2/2E$$ , makes these ‘fast flavor conversions’ independent of $$\Delta m^2$$ (thus mass) and energy. This is a surprising result as neutrino flavor conversions are considered to be the ultimate proof of massive neutrinos. However, the importance of this effect in the realistic astrophysical scenarios still remains to be understood.

Matter effects on the flavor conversions of solar neutrinos and high-energy astrophysical neutrinos

Can we observe the solar eclipses in the neutrino light? In principle, this is possible by identifying the lunar matter effects on the flavor conversions of solar neutrinos when they traverse the Moon before reaching the detectors at the Earth. Unfortunately, we show that the lunar matter effects on the survival probability of solar B8 neutrinos are suppressed by an additional factor of 1.2%, compared to the day-night asymmetry. However, we point out that the matter effects on the flavor conversions of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos, when they propagate through the Sun, can be significant. Though the flavor composition of high-energy neutrinos can be remarkably modified, it is quite challenging to observe such effects even in the next-generation of neutrino telescopes.

Liouville term for neutrinos: flavor structure and wave interpretation

Neutrino production, absorption, transport, and flavor evolution in astrophysical environments is described by a kinetic equation Dϱ=−i[H,ϱ]+\U0001d49e[ϱ]. Its basic elements are generalized occupation numbers ϱ, matrices in flavor space, that depend on time t, space x, and momentum p. The commutator expression encodes flavor conversion in terms of a matrix H of oscillation frequencies, whereas \U0001d49e[ϱ] represents source and sink terms as well as collisions. The Liouville operator on the left hand side involves linear derivatives in t, x and p. The simplified expression D=∂t+p̂⋅∂x for ultra-relativistic neutrinos was recently questioned in that flavor-dependent velocities should appear instead of the unit vector p̂. Moreover, a new damping term was postulated as a result. We here derive the full flavor-dependent velocity structure of the Liouville term although it appears to cause only higher-order corrections. Moreover, we argue that on the scale of the neutrino oscillation length, the kinetic equation can be seen as a first-order wave equation.

Shell-model computed cross sections for charged-current scattering of astrophysical neutrinos off Ar40

Charged-current (anti)neutrino-$^{40}\mathrm{Ar}$ cross sections for astrophysical neutrinos have been calculated. The initial and final nuclear states were calculated using the nuclear shell model. The folded solar-neutrino scattering cross section was found to be $1.78(23)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}42}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$, which is higher than what the previous papers have reported. The contributions from the ${1}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ and ${2}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ multipoles were found to be significant at supernova-neutrino energies, confirming the random-phase approximation (RPA) result of a previous study. The effects of neutrino flavor conversions in dense stellar matter (matter oscillations) were found to enhance the neutrino-scattering cross sections significantly for both the normal and inverted mass hierarchies. For the antineutrino scattering, only a small difference between the nonoscillating and inverted-hierarchy cross sections was found, while the normal-hierarchy cross section was 2--3 times larger than that of the nonoscillating cross section, depending on the adopted parametrization of the Fermi-Dirac distribution. This property of the supernova-antineutrino signal could probably be used to distinguish between the two hierarchies in megaton LAr detectors.

Nonstandard neutrino self-interactions in a supernova and fast flavor conversions

We study the effects of non-standard self-interactions (NSSI) of neutrinos streaming out of a core-collapse supernova. We show that with NSSI, the standard linear stability analysis gives rise to linearly as well as exponentially growing solutions. For a two-box spectrum, we demonstrate analytically that flavor-preserving NSSI lead to a suppression of bipolar collective oscillations. In the intersecting four-beam model, we show that flavor-violating NSSI can lead to fast oscillations even when the angle between the neutrino and antineutrino beams is obtuse, which is forbidden in the Standard Model. This leads to the new possibility of fast oscillations in a two-beam system with opposing neutrino-antineutrino fluxes, even in the absence of any spatial inhomogeneities. Finally, we solve the full non-linear equations of motion in the four-beam model numerically, and explore the interplay of fast and slow flavor conversions in the long-time behavior, in the presence of NSSI.

Strange mechanics of the neutrino flavor pendulum

We identify in the flavor transformation of astrophysical neutrinos a new class of phenomena, a common outcome of which is the suppression of flavor conversion. Appealing to the equivalence between a bipolar neutrino system and a gyroscopic pendulum, we find that these phenomena have rather striking interpretations in the mechanical picture: in one instance, the gyroscopic pendulum initially precesses in one direction, then comes to a halt and begins to precess in the opposite direction---a counterintuitive behavior that we analogize to the motion of a toy known as a rattleback. We analyze these behaviors in the early universe, wherein a chance connection to sterile neutrino dark matter emerges, and we briefly suggest how they might manifest in compact-object environments.

Fast neutrino flavor conversion as oscillations in a quartic potential

Neutrinos in dense environments undergo collective pair conversions $\nu_e\bar{\nu}_e \leftrightarrow \nu_x\bar{\nu}_x$, where $x$ is a non-electron flavor, due to forward scattering off each other that may be a crucial ingredient for supernova explosions. Depending on the flavor-dependent local angular distributions of the neutrino fluxes, the conversion rate can be "fast", i.e., of the order $\mu=\sqrt{2}G_F n_\nu$, which can far exceed the usual neutrino oscillation frequency $\omega=\Delta m^2/(2E)$. Until now, this surprising nonlinear phenomenon has only been understood in the linear regime and explored further using numerical experiments. We present an analytical treatment of the simplest system that exhibits fast conversions, and show that the conversion can be understood as the dynamics of a particle rolling down in a quartic potential governed dominantly by $\mu$, but seeded by slower oscillations.

Neutrinos from Supernovae

Neutrinos are fundamental particles in the collapse of massive stars. Because of their weakly interacting nature, neutrinos can travel undisturbed through the stellar core and be direct probes of the still uncertain and fascinating supernova mechanism. Intriguing recent developments on the role of neutrinos during the stellar collapse are reviewed, as well as our current understanding of the flavor conversions in the stellar envelope. The detection perspectives of the next burst and of the diffuse supernova background will be also outlined. High-energy neutrinos in the GeV-PeV range can follow the MeV neutrino emission. Various scenarios concerning the production of high-energy neutrinos are discussed.

Imprints of neutrino-pair flavor conversions on nucleosynthesis in ejecta from neutron-star merger remnants

The remnant of neutron star mergers is dense in neutrinos. By employing inputs from one hydrodynamical simulation of a binary neutron star merger remnant with a black hole of $3\ M_\odot$ in the center, dimensionless spin parameter $0.8$ and an accretion torus of $0.3\ M_\odot$, the neutrino emission properties are investigated as the merger remnant evolves. Initially, the local number density of $\bar{\nu}_e$ is larger than that of $\nu_e$ everywhere above the remnant. Then, as the torus approaches self-regulated equilibrium, the local abundance of neutrinos overcomes that of antineutrinos in a funnel around the polar region. The region where the fast pairwise flavor conversions can occur shrinks accordingly as time evolves. Still, we find that fast flavor conversions do affect most of the neutrino-driven ejecta. Assuming that fast flavor conversions lead to flavor equilibration, a significant enhancement of nuclei with mass numbers $A>130$ is found as well as a change of the lanthanide mass fraction by more than a factor of a thousand. Our findings hint towards a potentially relevant role of neutrino flavor oscillations for the prediction of the kilonova (macronova) lightcurves and motivate further work in this direction.

Supernova Neutrinos: New Challenges and Future Directions

Neutrinos are key particles in core-collapse supernovae. Traveling unimpeded through the stellar core, neutrinos can be direct probes of the still uncertain and fascinating supernova mechanism. Intriguing recent developments on the role of neutrinos during the stellar collapse are reviewed, as well as our current understanding of the flavor conversions in the stellar envelope. The detection perspectives of the next burst will be also outlined.

Fast flavor conversions of supernova neutrinos: Classifying instabilities via dispersion relations

Supernova neutrinos can exhibit a rich variety of flavor conversion mechanisms. In particular, they can experience "fast" self-induced flavor conversions almost immediately above the core. Very recently, a novel method has been proposed to investigate these phenomena, in terms of the dispersion relation for the complex frequency and wave number ($\omega$,$k$) of disturbances in the mean field of the $\nu_e\nu_x$ flavor coherence. We discuss a systematic approach to such instabilities, originally developed in the context of plasma physics, and based of the time-asymptotic behavior of the Green's function of the system. Instabilities are typically seen to emerge for complex $\omega$, and can be further characterized as convective (moving away faster than they spread) and absolute (growing locally), depending on $k$-dependent features. Stable cases emerge when $k$ (but not $\omega$) is complex, leading to disturbances damped in space, or when both $\omega$ and $k$ are real, corresponding to complete stability. The analytical classification of both unstable and stable modes leads not only to qualitative insights about their features but also to quantitative predictions about the growth rates of instabilities. Representative numerical solutions are discussed in a simple two-beam model of interacting neutrinos. As an application, we argue that supernova and binary neutron star mergers exhibiting a "crossing" in the electron lepton number would lead to an absolute instability in the flavor content of the neutrino gas.

Fast neutrino conversions: Ubiquitous in compact binary merger remnants

The massive neutron star (NS) or black hole (BH) accretion disk resulting from NS--NS or NS--BH mergers is dense in neutrinos. We present the first study on the role of angular distributions in the neutrino flavor conversion above the remnant disk. In particular, we focus on "fast" pairwise conversions whose rate depends on the local angular intensity of the electron lepton number carried by neutrinos. Because of the emission geometry and the flux density of $\bar{\nu}_e$ being larger than that of $\nu_e$, fast conversions prove to be a generic phenomenon in NS--NS and NS--BH mergers for physically motivated disturbances in the mean field of flavor coherence. Our findings suggest that, differently from the core-collapse supernova case, fast flavor conversions seem to be unavoidable in compact mergers and could have major consequences for the jet dynamics and the synthesis of elements above the remnant disk.

New effects of non-standard self-interactions of neutrinos in a supernova

Neutrino self-interactions are known to lead to non-linear collective flavor oscillations in a core-collapse supernova. We point out new possible effects of non-standard self-interactions (NSSI) of neutrinos on flavor conversions in a two-flavor framework. We show that, for a single-energy neutrino-antineutrino ensemble, a flavor instability is generated even in normal hierarchy for large enough NSSI. Using a toy model for the neutrino spectra, we show that flavor-preserving NSSI lead to pinching of spectral swaps, while flavor-violating NSSI cause swaps to develop away from a spectral crossing or even in the absence of a spectral crossing. Consequently, NSSI could give rise to collective oscillations and spectral splits even during neutronization burst, for both hierarchies.

Helicity coherence in binary neutron star mergers and nonlinear feedback

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.