• Open Access

Fast neutrino flavor conversion as oscillations in a quartic potential

Basudeb Dasgupta and Manibrata Sen
Phys. Rev. D 97, 023017 – Published 25 January 2018

Abstract

Neutrinos in dense environments undergo collective pair conversions νeν¯eνxν¯x, where x is a nonelectron 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 μ=2GFnν, which can far exceed the usual neutrino oscillation frequency ω=Δm2/(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 μ but seeded by slower subleading effects.

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  • Received 18 October 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.023017

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Particles & FieldsGravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics

Authors & Affiliations

Basudeb Dasgupta* and Manibrata Sen

  • Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Homi Bhabha Road, Mumbai 400005, India

  • *bdasgupta@theory.tifr.res.in
  • manibrata@theory.tifr.res.in

Article Text

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Issue

Vol. 97, Iss. 2 — 15 January 2018

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