Neutrino oscillations in a neutrino-dominated accretion disk around a Kerr BH

TL;DR

This paper investigates neutrino flavor oscillations within a hypercritical accretion disk around a Kerr black hole, revealing significant effects on neutrino energy deposition rates relevant for gamma-ray burst models.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of neutrino oscillations in such extreme accretion disk conditions, showing how flavor effects can reduce energy deposition estimates.

Findings

Neutrino oscillations occur with frequencies between 10^5 and 10^9 s^-1.

Flavor equipartition is achieved inside the disk under inverted hierarchy.

Energy deposition by neutrino annihilation can be reduced by up to a factor of 5.

Abstract

In the binary-driven hypernova model of long gamma-ray bursts, a carbon-oxygen star explodes as a supernova in presence of a neutron star binary companion in close orbit. Hypercritical (i.e. highly super-Eddington) accretion of the ejecta matter onto the neutron star sets in, making it reach the critical mass with consequent formation of a Kerr black hole. We have recently shown that, during the accretion process onto the neutron star, fast neutrino flavour oscillations occur. Numerical simulations of the above system show that a part of the ejecta keeps bound to the newborn Kerr black hole, leading to a new process of hypercritical accretion. We here address, also for this phase of the binary-driven hypernova, the occurrence of neutrino flavour oscillations given the extreme conditions of high density (up to $10^{12}$ g cm$^{-3}$) and temperatures (up to tens of MeV) inside this disk. We estimate the \textcolor{red}{behaviour} of the electronic and non-electronic neutrino content within the two-flavour formalism ($\nu_{e}\nu_{x}$) under the action of neutrino collective effects by neutrino self-interactions. We find that in the case of inverted mass hierarchy, neutrino oscillations inside the disk have frequencies between $\sim (10^{5}$-$10^{9})$ s$^{-1}$, leading the disk to achieve flavour equipartition. This implies that the energy deposition rate by neutrino annihilation ($\nu + \bar{\nu} \to e^{-} + e^{+}$) in the vicinity of the Kerr black hole, is smaller than previous estimates in the literature not accounting by flavour oscillations inside the disk. The exact value of the reduction factor depends on the $\nu_{e}$ and $\nu_{x}$ optical depths but it can be as high as $\sim 5$. The results of this work are a first step toward the analysis of neutrino oscillations in a novel astrophysical context and, as such, deserve further attention.