New developments on the physics of neutrino fast flavor conversion

by Ian Padilla Gay (Niels Bohr Institute)

Thursday 19 May 2022, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Berlin

https://mppmu.zoom.us/j/99300254726

In dense astrophysical environments, the neutrino and antineutrino densities are so extreme that neutrino-neutrino coherent forward scattering leads to collective neutrino oscillations, perhaps affecting the core-collapse mechanism and the nucleosynthesis of elements heavier than iron in compact binary remnants. Due to the profound potential implications for the source's physics, the so-called neutrino fast pairwise flavor conversion (FFC) is a topic of intense research. Currently, FFC poses significant challenges for its implementation in realistic astrophysical environments due to its fast timescale, and thus a fully self-consistent simulation of astrophysical sources that includes FFC is not yet available. In this talk, I will discuss under which conditions one should anticipate large neutrino flavor conversion and answer the long-elusive question of identifying a systematic method to predict the final flavor outcome by relying entirely on the initial electron-lepton-number spectrum.