29 May 2018 to 3 June 2018
Hyatt Regency Indian Wells Conference Center
US/Pacific timezone

Multi-Angle Simulations of Matter-Neutrino Resonance

29 May 2018, 15:20
20m
North Foyer | Joshua Tree Room (Hyatt Regency Indian Wells Conference Center)

North Foyer | Joshua Tree Room

Hyatt Regency Indian Wells Conference Center

44600 Indian Wells Lane, Indian Wells, CA 92210, USA

Speaker

Dr Alexey Vlasenko (North Carolina State University)

Description

Neutrino flavor transformation in compact object mergers can be dominated by matter-neutrino resonances (MNRs). By efficiently converting electron neutrinos to other species, MNRs can affect nucleosynthesis and the dynamics of the merger. Prior to our work, calulations of MNR have used the single-angle approximation, only following flavor evolution along a single neutrino trajectory. However, self-consistency requires that all trajectories be treated simultaneously. It was not known whether MNR phenomena would be present in a multi-angle model, or whether they were merely an artifact of the single-angle approximation. We present the first fully multi-angle calculations of MNR, finding that some familiar features of single-angle MNR are still present. However, there are qualitative differences compared to the single-angle results. We show that the type of flavor transformation seen in multi-angle MNR is extremely robust, occurring with relatively little change under a wide variety of physical conditions. This suggests that neutrino flavor transformation due to MNR can play an important role in merger environments, and does not strongly depend on detailed assumptions about the matter distribution, neutrino spectrum or composition.
E-mail [email protected]
Funding source U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics

Primary author

Dr Alexey Vlasenko (North Carolina State University)

Co-author

Prof. Gail McLaughlin (North Carolina State University)

Presentation materials