Nuclear, Particle, Astroparticle and Cosmology (NUPAC) Seminars
Stimulated neutrino transformation through turbulence on a changing density profile and application to supernovae
Presented by Kelly Patton, Arizona State University
Neutrino physics stands at an exciting frontier. Recent experiments have revealed enough about these mysterious particles that they can now be used as probes to study other systems, ranging from the subatomic to the astrophysical. In this talk, I will focus on the astrophysical, particularly neutrinos traveling through the turbulent density profiles of supernovae. Flavor transformations in neutrinos can be stimulated by density perturbations with frequencies the splitting between neutrino eigenvalues, or integer fractions thereof. This phenomenon, similar to stimulated emission in atomic systems, is known as parametric resonance. We have investigated these stimulated transformations for neutrinos traveling through turbulent density profiles. We have successfully derived an analytic formula that predicts the transition amplitude and wavelength for neutrinos traveling through turbulence of up to 50 Fourier modes. Through this formula, we have identified two important wavelength scales: one which stimulates transitions and another, typically much longer, which suppresses the transitions. We have expanded this analytic approach to a 1D supernova model, and show that we can predict where transitions will occur as the neutrino propagates.
2:00 pm, Tuesday, February 24, 2015
PAIS-2540, PAIS
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