Possible trace of neutrino nonstandard interactions in the supernova

TL;DR

This paper investigates how non-standard neutrino interactions could influence neutrino signals from supernovae, revealing potential observable effects at low energies but also highlighting the experimental challenges due to low antineutrino production.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of NSI effects on supernova neutrino probabilities, especially at low energies, and discusses their potential observational signatures.

Findings

Increased electron neutrino and antineutrino probabilities at low energies for normal hierarchy.

NSI effects cause probabilities to converge for different hierarchies at low energies.

Antineutrino decay signals are suppressed, making experimental detection unlikely.

Abstract

Neutrino non-standard interactions (NSI), previously introduced for the sun, are studied in the supernova context. For normal hierarchy the probability for electron neutrinos and antineutrinos at low energy ($E\lesssim 0.8-0.9 MeV$) is substantially increased with respect to the non-NSI case and joins its value for inverse hierarchy which is constant with energy. Also for inverse hierarchy the NSI and non-NSI probabilities are the same for each neutrino and antineutrino species. These are the possible visible effects of NSI in the supernova. The decay into antineutrinos, which has been previously shown to be implied by dense matter, cannot be seen experimentally, owing to the smallness of the antineutrino production probability.