Collective Neutrino Oscillations

TL;DR

This paper reviews the complex phenomena of neutrino flavor transformation caused by neutrino self-coupling, highlighting different scenarios and their implications for supernova physics and neutrino property determination.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of collective neutrino oscillation scenarios, illustrating key phenomena and their significance for astrophysics and neutrino physics.

Findings

Identification of three key collective neutrino oscillation scenarios

Insights into how these phenomena affect supernova neutrino signals

Implications for determining neutrino properties like mass hierarchy

Abstract

We review the rich phenomena associated with neutrino flavor transformation in the presence of neutrino self-coupling. Our exposition centers on three collective neutrino oscillation scenarios: a simple bipolar neutrino system that initially consists of mono-energetic electron neutrinos and antineutrinos; a homogeneous and isotropic neutrino gas with multiple neutrino/antineutrino species and continuous energy spectra; and a generic neutrino gas in an anisotropic environment. We use each of these scenarios to illustrate key facets of collective neutrino oscillations. We discuss the implications of collective neutrino flavor oscillations for core collapse supernova physics and for the prospects of obtaining fundamental neutrino properties, e.g., the neutrino mass hierarchy and $\theta_{13}$ from a future observed supernova neutrino signal.