Non-Standard Neutrino Self-Interactions Can Cause Neutrino Flavor Equipartition Inside the Supernova Core

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that non-standard neutrino self-interactions can rapidly cause flavor equipartition deep inside supernova cores, potentially affecting supernova physics and offering a way to probe new physics through future observations.

Contribution

It is the first study to show how non-standard neutrino self-interactions induce flavor equipartition in a multi-angle supernova environment, with significant implications.

Findings

Flavor equipartition can occur on very short scales inside supernovae.

Non-standard interactions can be detectable even if much smaller than Standard Model interactions.

Deep inside proto-neutron stars, flavor dynamics are significantly affected.

Abstract

We show that non-standard neutrino self-interactions can lead to total flavor equipartition in a dense neutrino gas, such as those expected in core-collapse supernovae. In this first investigation of this phenomenon in the multi-angle scenario, we demonstrate that such a flavor equipartition can occur on very short scales, and therefore very deep inside the newly formed proto-neutron star, with a possible significant impact on the physics of core-collapse supernovae. Our findings imply that future galactic core-collapse supernovae can appreciably probe non-standard neutrino self-interactions, for certain cases even when they are many orders of magnitude smaller than the Standard Model terms.