Flavor conversion of cosmic neutrinos from hidden jets

TL;DR

This paper provides a detailed analysis of how high-energy cosmic neutrinos change flavor as they travel through stars and Earth, revealing new interference effects and dependencies on neutrino and star parameters.

Contribution

It offers the first comprehensive analytic and numerical model of neutrino flavor conversion inside jets, stars, and Earth, including novel interference effects and parameter dependencies.

Findings

Identification of new interference features ('L- and H- wiggles') in flavor conversion.

Dependence of flavor ratios on neutrino mixing angles and star density profiles.

Potential to determine neutrino and astrophysical parameters from energy-dependent flavor measurements.

Abstract

High energy cosmic neutrino fluxes can be produced inside relativistic jets under the envelopes of collapsing stars. In the energy range E ~ (0.3 - 1e5) GeV, flavor conversion of these neutrinos is modified by various matter effects inside the star and the Earth. We present a comprehensive (both analytic and numerical) description of the flavor conversion of these neutrinos which includes: (i) oscillations inside jets, (ii) flavor-to-mass state transitions in an envelope, (iii) loss of coherence on the way to observer, and (iv) oscillations of the mass states inside the Earth. We show that conversion has several new features which are not realized in other objects, in particular interference effects ("L- and H- wiggles") induced by the adiabaticity violation. The neutrino-neutrino scattering inside jet and inelastic neutrino interactions in the envelope may produce some additional features at E > 1e4 GeV. We study dependence of the probabilities and flavor ratios in the matter-affected region on angles theta13 and theta23, on the CP-phase delta, as well as on the initial flavor content and density profile of the star. We show that measurements of the energy dependence of the flavor ratios will, in principle, allow to determine independently the neutrino and astrophysical parameters.