Effect of Transition Magnetic Moments on Collective Supernova Neutrino Oscillations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how small Majorana transition magnetic moments influence collective neutrino oscillations in supernovae, revealing potentially observable effects even at minimal magnetic moment values.

Contribution

It demonstrates that minor Majorana transition magnetic moments can cause significant collective oscillation effects in supernova neutrinos, a novel insight into neutrino physics.

Findings

Collective oscillation effects relate neutrinos and antineutrinos of different flavors.

Observable phenomena can occur at magnetic moments near standard model predictions.

Implications for future supernova neutrino detection and analysis.

Abstract

We study the effect of Majorana transition magnetic moments on the flavor evolution of neutrinos and antineutrinos inside the core of Type-II supernova explosions. We find non-trivial collective oscillation effects relating neutrinos and antineutrinos of different flavors, even if one restricts the discussion to Majorana transition electromagnetic moment values that are not much larger than those expected from standard model interactions and nonzero neutrino Majorana masses. This appears to be, to the best of our knowledge, the only potentially observable phenomenon sensitive to such small values of Majorana transition magnetic moments. We briefly comment on the effect of Dirac transition magnetic moments and on the consequences of our results for future observations of the flux of neutrinos of different flavors from a nearby supernova explosion.