Collective Neutrino Flavor Transformation In Supernovae

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  • 9 November 2005
Abstract
We examine the coherent active-active channel nonlinear neutrino flavor evolution in the post-core-bounce supernova environment. We improve on the previous spin precession analogy to neutrino oscillation, and propose the concept of neutrino flavor isospin, which treats neutrinos and anti-neutrinos on an equal footing. We point out a key conserved quantity, the "total effective energy". This conservation condition suggests a simple explanation for previous numerical results. We employ a co-rotating frame in the spin precession picture to gain physical insights into the collective behaviors of this system when neutrino-neutrino forward scattering dominates the weak potentials which govern flavor conversion. We also use the spin precession analogy to analyze previously-derived limits for the behavior of supernova neutrinos, e.g., the Background Dominant Solution, and we speculate on how such solutions could arise in realistic supernova environments.

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