Nuclear, Particle, Astroparticle and Cosmology (NUPAC) Seminars
Collisional Flavor Instabilities in Neutrino-Dense Anisotropic Environments
Presented by Nishant Raina (UNM)
Neutrino-dense environments are host to the phenomenon of collective oscillations where neutrino-neutrino refraction impacts neutrino flavor transformation in nontrivial ways. Charged-current neutrino collision processes like those of neutrino emission and absorption on nucleons act as a measurement of a neutrino’s flavor state causing it to decohere. However, collisional flavor instabilities (CFIs) are sometimes found to enhance flavor conversion when aided by neutrino-neutrino refraction. Results obtained while assuming an isotropic neutrino distribution function attribute asymmetries between the collision rates to be responsible for this. It is also found, among other things, that the maximum growth rates for CFIs are co-existent with having a negligible neutrino electron lepton number. Our work focuses on extending this theory by taking into account an anisotropic distribution function for the neutrinos, namely one dependent on both the energy and direction of neutrinos. We hope to explain some of these concepts in more detail while laying out the strategy we intend to use to solve the anisotropic problem.
2:00 pm, Tuesday, October 24, 2023
PAIS-3205, PAIS
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