Fast flavor conversions in supernovae: the rise of mu-tau neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper presents the first non-linear three-flavor simulations of fast neutrino flavor conversions in supernovae, highlighting the importance of muon and tau neutrino distributions and their potential impact on supernova dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces the first non-linear three-flavor simulation framework for fast neutrino conversions in supernovae, accounting for muon production effects.

Findings

Muon and tau lepton number distributions significantly influence flavor conversions.

Three-flavor results differ markedly from two-flavor approximations.

Fast conversions could impact supernova explosion mechanisms and nucleosynthesis.

Abstract

Neutrinos in a core-collapse supernova can undergo fast flavor conversions with a possible impact on the explosion mechanism and nucleosynthesis. We perform the first non-linear simulations of fast conversions in the presence of three neutrino flavors. The recent supernova simulations with muon production call for such an analysis, as they relax the standard $\nu_{\mu,\tau}=\bar{\nu}_{\mu,\tau}$ (two-flavor) assumption. Our results show the significance of muon and tau lepton number angular distributions, together with the traditional electron lepton number ones. Indeed, our three-flavor results are potentially very different from two-flavor ones. These results strengthen the need to further investigate the occurrence of fast conversions in supernova simulation data, including the degeneracy breaking of mu and tau neutrinos.