A compact accretion disk may be formed in the merger of two neutron stars or of a neutron star and a stellar-mass black hole. Outflows from such accretion disks have been identified as a major site of rapid neutron-capture (r-process) nucleosynthesis and as the source of 'red' kilonova emission following the first observed neutron-star merger GW170817. We present long-term general-relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamic simulations of a typical post-merger accretion disk at initial accretion rates of $\dot{M}\sim 1\,M_\odot\,\text{s}^{-1}$ over 400ms post-merger. We include neutrino radiation transport that accounts for effects of neutrino fast flavor conversions dynamically. We find ubiquitous flavor oscillations that result in a significantly more neutron-rich outflow, providing lanthanide and 3rd-peak r-process abundances similar to solar abundances. This provides strong evidence that post-merger accretion disks are a major production site of heavy r-process elements. A similar flavor effect may allow for increased lanthanide production in collapsars. The formalism presented here may also be used in simulations of core-collapse supernovae to explore whether fast conversions strengthen or weaken the explosion.
Neutrino flux streaming from a supernova can undergo rapid flavor conversions almost immediately above the core. Focusing on this region, we study these fast conversions using a linear stability analysis. We find that, for realistic angular distributions of neutrinos, fast conversions can occur within a few nanoseconds in regions just above the neutrinosphere. Our results also show that neutrinos travelling towards the core make fast conversions more rapid. These conversions, if they exist, can have significant implications for supernova explosion mechanism and nucleosynthesis.
It has been recently pointed out that neutrino fluxes from a supernova can show substantial flavor conversions almost immediately above the core. Using linear stability analyses and numerical solutions of the fully nonlinear equations of motion, we perform a detailed study of these fast conversions, focussing on the region just above the supernova core. We carefully specify the instabilities for evolution in space or time, andfind that neutrinos travelling towards the core make fast conversions more generic, i.e., possible for a wider range of flux ratios and angular asymmetries that produce a…
Neutrinos in a core-collapse supernova can undergo fast flavor conversions with a possible impact on the explosion mechanism and nucleosynthesis. We perform the first non-linear simulations of fast conversions in the presence of three neutrino flavors. The recent supernova simulations with muon production call for such an analysis, as they relax the standard $ν_{μ,τ}=\barν_{μ,τ}$ (two-flavor) assumption. Our results show the significance of muon and tau lepton number angular distributions, together with the traditional electron lepton number ones. Indeed, our three-flavor results are potential…
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 $\barν_e$ being larger than that of $ν_e$, fast conversions prove to be a generic phenomenon in NS--NS and NS--BH mergers for physically …
The flavor conversion of a neutrino usually occurs at densities $\lesssim G_F^{-1} ω$, whether in the ordinary matter or the neutrino medium, and on time/distance scales of order $ω^{-1}$, where $G_F$ is the Fermi weak coupling constant and $ω$ 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 $ω^{-1}$ 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 …
We show that a self-interacting neutrino gas can spontaneously acquire a non-stationary pulsating component in its flavor content, with a frequency that can exactly cancel the "multi-angle" refractive effects of dense matter. This can then enable homogeneous and inhomogeneous flavor conversion instabilities to exist even at large neutrino and matter densities, where the system would have been stable if the evolution were strictly stationary. Large flavor conversions, especially close to a supernova core, are possible via this novel mechanism. This may have important consequences for the explos…
The supernova neutrino flavor evolution in the presence of the non-trivial neutrino magnetic moment and strong magnetic field is numerically derived using the two-flavor and single-angle approximation. The novel properties of collective neutrino oscillations are studied and distinct patterns of flavor and spin-flavor spectral splits are presented. Finally we also discuss how the neutrino magnetic moment affects the observable supernova neutrino energy spectra.
Fast neutrino flavor conversion can occur in core-collapse supernovae or compact binary merger remnants when non-forward collisions are also at play, and neutrinos are not fully decoupled from matter. This work aims to shed light on the conditions under which fast flavor conversion is enhanced or suppressed by collisions. By relying on a neutrino toy model with three angular bins in the absence of spatial inhomogeneities, we consider two angular configurations: The first one with angular distributions of $ν_e$ and $\barν_e$ that are almost isotropic as expected before complete neutrino decoupl…
We calculate fast conversions of two flavor neutrinos by considering Boltzmann collisions of neutrino scatterings. In an idealized angular distribution of neutrinos with electron-lepton number crossing, we find that the collision terms of the neutrino scattering enhance the transition probability of fast flavor conversions as in the previous study. We analyze the dynamics of fast flavor conversions with collisions in detail based on the motion of polarization vectors in cylindrical coordinate analogous to a pendulum motion. The phase of the all polarization vector synchronizes in the linear ev…
Self induced neutrino flavor conversions in the dense regions of stellar core collapse are almost exclusively studied in the standard two flavor scenario. Linear stability analysis has been successfully used to understand these flavor conversions. This is the first linearized study of $\textit{three flavor}$ fast instabilities. The `fast' conversions are fascinating distinctions of the dense neutrino systems. In the fast modes the collective oscillation dynamics are independent of the neutrino mass, growing at the scale of the large neutrino-neutrino interaction strength ($10^5$ km$^{-1}$) of …
Impact of Neutrino Flavor Conversions on Neutron Star Merger Dynamics, Ejecta, Nucleosynthesis, and Multi-Messenger Signals
The Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）；University of Tennessee Knoxville（田纳西大学诺克斯维尔分校）；Università di Trento（特伦托大学）；INFN-TIFPA, Trento Institute for Fundamental Physics and Applications（意大利国家核物理研究所-特伦托基础物理与应用研究所）
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 $\barν_e$ is larger than that of $ν_e$ everywhere above the remnant. Then, as the torus approaches self-regulated equilibrium, the local abundance of neutrinos overcomes that of antineutrinos in a fun…
The modeling of fast flavor evolution of neutrinos in dense environments has been traditionally carried out by relying on a two flavor approximation for simplicity. In addition, vacuum mixing has been deemed negligible. For the first time, we highlight that the fast flavor evolution in three flavors is intrinsically different from the one obtained in the two flavor approximation. This is due to the exponential growth of flavor mixing in the $e$--$μ$ and $e$--$τ$ sectors generated by the vacuum term in the Hamiltonian. As a result, substantially larger flavor mixing is found in three flavors. O…
Neutrino flavor conversions may dramatically affect the inner working of compact astrophysical objects as well as the synthesis of the heavier elements. We present the first sophisticated numerical solution of the neutrino flavor conversion within a (2+1+1) dimensional setup: we include the advective term in the neutrino equations of motion and track the flavor evolution in two spatial dimensions, one angular variable, and time. Notably, the advective term hinders the development of neutrino pairwise conversions, if the conditions favoring such conversions (i.e., crossings between the angular …
In environments with high dense neutrino gases, such as in core-collapse supernovae, the neutrinos can experience collective neutrino oscillation due to their self-interactions. In particular, fast flavor conversion driven by the crossings in the neutrino angular distribution can affect explosion mechanism, nucleosynthesis, and neutrino observation. We perform the numerical computation of nonlinear flavor evolution on the neutrino angular distribution with tiny crossings expected to be generated in the preshock region. We demonstrate that the fast instability is triggered and a cascade develop…
A dense gas of neutrinos and antineutrinos can undergo fast pairwise conversions near the decoupling regions of core-collapse supernovae and in compact binary neutron star mergers. The flavor dependent neutrino heating can play a role in sustaining convection inside the hot and dense matter. In this paper, we study the unexplored effect of the bulk velocity of matter on fast pairwise conversions and demonstrate that depending on the direction and the magnitude of the bulk velocity, neutrino flavor conversions could be significantly enhanced or suppressed. The bulk velocity of matter, which is …
Fast flavor conversions of supernova neutrinos, possible near the neutrinosphere, depends on an interesting interplay of collisions and neutrino oscillations. Contrary to naive expectations, the rate of self-induced neutrino oscillations, due to neutrino-neutrino forward scattering, comfortably exceeds the rate of collisions even deep inside the supernova core. Consistently accounting for collisions and oscillations, we present the first calculations to show that collisions can create the conditions for fast flavor conversions of neutrinos, but oscillations can continue without significant dam…
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 …
We study the neutrino flavor evolution in the neutrino-driven wind from a binary neutron star merger remnant consisting of a massive neutron star surrounded by an accretion disk. With the neutrino emission characteristics and the hydrodynamical profile of the remnant consistently extracted from a three-dimensional simulation, we compute the flavor evolution by taking into account neutrino coherent forward scattering off ordinary matter and neutrinos themselves. We employ a "single-trajectory" approach to investigate the dependence of the flavor evolution on the neutrino emission location and a…
Self-induced flavor conversion of supernova (SN) neutrinos is a generic feature of neutrino-neutrino dispersion. The corresponding run-away modes in flavor space can spontaneously break the original symmetries of the neutrino flux and in particular can spontaneously produce small-scale features as shown in recent schematic studies. However, the unavoidable "multi-angle matter effect" shifts these small-scale instabilities into regions of matter and neutrino density which are not encountered on the way out from a SN. The traditional modes which are uniform on the largest scales are most prone f…
Neutrino-neutrino refraction dominates the flavor evolution in core-collapse supernovae, neutron-star mergers, and the early universe. Ordinary neutrino flavor conversion develops on timescales determined by the vacuum oscillation frequency. However, when the neutrino density is large enough, collective flavor conversion may arise because of pairwise neutrino scattering. Pairwise conversion is deemed to be fast as it is expected to occur on timescales that depend on the neutrino-neutrino interaction energy (i.e., on the neutrino number density) and is regulated by the angular distributions of …
Neutrinos propagating in dense neutrino media such as core-collapse supernovae and neutron star merger remnants can experience the so-called fast flavor conversions on scales much shorter than those expected in vacuum. A very generic class of fast flavor instabilities is the ones which are produced by the backward scattering of neutrinos off the nuclei at relatively large distances from the supernova core. In this study we demonstrate that despite their ubiquity, such fast instabilities are unlikely to cause significant flavor conversions if the population of neutrinos in the backward directio…
Fast and collisional flavor instabilities possibly occur in the neutrino decoupling regions of core-collapse supernovae and neutron-star mergers. To gain a better understanding of the relevant flavor dynamics, we numerically solve for the collisionally unstable evolution in a homogeneous, anisotropic model. In these calculations collisional instability is precipitated by unequal neutrino and antineutrino scattering rates. We compare the solutions obtained using neutral-current and charged-current interactions. We then study the nonlinear development of fast instabilities subjected to asymmetri…
Neutrinos in dense environments undergo collective pair conversions $ν_e\barν_e \leftrightarrow ν_x\barν_x$, 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 $μ=\sqrt{2}G_F n_ν$, which can far exceed the usual neutrino oscillation frequency $ω=Δm^2/(2E)$. Until now, this surprising nonlinear phenomenon has only been understood in the linear regime and explored further us…
Several recent numerical studies have examined the effects of neutrino neutral-current scattering on fast flavor conversion (FFC). Those studies are in apparent conflict, with some finding enhancement of flavor conversion and others finding suppression. The ones that report enhancement all use homogeneous models, and we discuss in detail the self-consistency issues that they face as a result. We reproduce scattering-enhanced FFC in our own homogeneous calculations, showing that it occurs for both neutral- and charged-current scattering and that it is due to isotropization of the angular distri…
A dense neutrino medium could experience self-induced flavor conversions on relatively small scales in the presence of the so-called fast flavor conversion modes. Owing to the fact that fast conversion scales could be much smaller than the ones of the traditional collective neutrino oscillations, it has been speculated that fast modes could lead to some sort of flavor decoherence/equilibrium. We study the evolution of fast modes in the nonlinear regime and we show that not only fast modes are not guaranteed to lead to flavor equilibrium, but also they could lead to some sort of collective neut…
Neutrino-neutrino interactions can lead to collective flavor conversion in the dense parts of a core collapse supernova. Growing instabilities that lead to collective conversions have been studied intensely in the limit of two-neutrino species and occur for inverted mass ordering in the case of a perfectly spherical supernova. We examine two simple models of colliding and intersecting neutrino beams and show, that for three neutrino species instabilities exist also for normal mass ordering even in the case of a fully symmetric system. Whereas the instability for inverted mass ordering is assoc…
We make a strong case that the fast neutrino-flavor conversion, one of the collective flavor oscillation modes, commonly occurs in core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe). It is confirmed in the numerical data obtained in realistic simulations of CCSNe but the argument is much more generic and applicable universally: the coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering makes the electron lepton number (ELN) change signs at some inward direction and trigger the flavor conversion in the outward direction in the pre-shock region. Although the ELN crossing is tiny and that is why it has eluded recognition so far, it…
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 M…
We perform numerical simulations of fast collective neutrino flavor conversions in an one-dimensional box mimicking a system with the periodic boundary condition in one spatial direction and translation symmetry in the other two dimensions. We evolve the system over several thousands of the characteristic timescale (inverse of the interaction strength) with different initial $\barν_e$ to $ν_e$ number density ratios and different initial seed perturbations. We find that small scale structures are formed due to the interaction of the flavor waves. This results in nearly flavor depolarization in …
In core-collapse supernovae or compact binary merger remnants, neutrino-neutrino refraction can spawn fast pair conversion of the type $ν_e \barν_e \leftrightarrow ν_x \barν_x$ (with $x=μ, τ$), governed by the angle-dependent density matrices of flavor lepton number. In a homogeneous and axially symmetric two-flavor system, all angle modes evolve coherently, and we show that the nonlinear equations of motion are formally equivalent to those of a gyroscopic pendulum. Within this analogy, our main innovation is to identify the elusive characteristic of the lepton-number angle distribution that d…
Fast pairwise conversions of neutrinos are predicted to be ubiquitous in neutron star merger remnants with potentially major implications on the nucleosynthesis of the elements heavier than iron. We present the first sophisticated numerical solution of the neutrino flavor evolution above the remnant disk within a (2+1+1) dimensional setup: two spatial coordinates, one angular variable, and time. We look for a steady-state flavor configuration above the remnant disk. Albeit the linear stability analysis predicts flavor instabilities at any location above the remnant disk, our simulations in the…
Despite being a well understood phenomenon in the context of current terrestrial experiments, neutrino flavor conversions in dense astrophysical environments probably represent one of the most challenging open problems in neutrino physics. Apart from being theoretically interesting, such a problem has several phenomenological implications in cosmology and in astrophysics, including the primordial nucleosynthesis of light elements abundance and other cosmological observables, nucleosynthesis of heavy nuclei and the explosion of massive stars. In this review, we briefly summarize the state of th…
We investigate the multi-azimuthal angle (MAA) effect on collective neutrino oscillation by considering the three-dimensional neutrino momentum distribution in a realistic electron-capture supernova model with an $8.8 M_{\odot}$ progenitor. We find that the MAA effect induces collective flavor conversions at epochs when it is completely suppressed under the axial-symmetric approximation. This novel activity is switched on/off by the growth of the MAA instability and imprints additional time evolution in the expected neutrino event rate. We validate our results by extending the linear stability…
