Numerical and Physical Stability of Supernova Neutrino Flavor Evolution

TL;DR

This study investigates the complex behavior of neutrino flavor evolution outside a supernova, highlighting non-linear interactions, chaotic solutions, and the need for advanced numerical methods.

Contribution

It introduces a one-dimensional model capturing non-linear neutrino interactions and analyzes their stability and chaotic behavior in supernova environments.

Findings

Analytic solutions show different behavior from solar neutrino evolution.

Numerical solutions reveal chaotic dynamics requiring extended algorithms.

The model provides insights into neutrino flavor stability outside supernovae.

Abstract

This paper examines neutrino flavor evolution outside a supernova neutrinosphere using a one-dimensional model that retains the non-linear nature of neutrino-neutrino interactions as well as some aspects of the full geometry. In some limiting cases analytic results can be obtained that display different behavior from their counterparts in (linear) solar neutrino flavor evolution. For more general cases, numerical solutions require extended numerical algorithms to achieve stable solutions, and these solutions exhibit standard chaotic behavior.