Neutrinos in Cosmology and Astrophysics

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in neutrino physics and astrophysics, highlighting their significance for cosmology, nuclear physics, and the complex quantum behavior of neutrinos in dense matter.

Contribution

It connects developments in neutrino research with observational cosmology and explores the unique many-body quantum mechanics of self-interacting neutrino gases.

Findings

Neutrino behavior in dense matter is a fundamental many-body quantum problem.

Neutrino physics advances influence cosmological and astrophysical research.

Self-interacting neutrino gases are driven solely by weak interactions.

Abstract

We briefly review the recent developments in neutrino physics and astrophysics which have import for frontline research in nuclear physics. These developments, we argue, tie nuclear physics to exciting developments in observational cosmology and astrophysics in new ways. Moreover, the behavior of neutrinos in dense matter is itself a fundamental problem in many-body quantum mechanics, in some ways akin to well-known issues in nuclear matter and nuclei, and in some ways radically different, especially because of nonlinearity and quantum de-coherence. The self-interacting neutrino gas is the only many body system driven by the weak interactions.