Neutrino quantum kinetics in two spatial dimensions

TL;DR

This paper models neutrino flavor evolution in two spatial dimensions, incorporating collisions, advection, and perturbations, revealing complex flavor conversion patterns that are crucial for understanding astrophysical phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a (2+1+1) dimensional simulation of neutrino quantum kinetics, including collisions and perturbations, advancing beyond spherically symmetric models.

Findings

Flavor conversion is significantly affected by perturbations.

Neutrino advection spreads flavor waves across regions.

Symmetry breaking leads to alternating flavor conversion regions.

Abstract

Our understanding of neutrino flavor conversion in the innermost regions of core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers is mostly limited to spherically symmetric configurations that facilitate the numerical solution of the quantum kinetic equations. In this paper, we simulate neutrino quantum kinetics within a (2+1+1) dimensional setup: we model the flavor evolution during neutrino decoupling from matter in two spatial dimensions, one neutrino momentum variable, and time; taking into account non-forward neutral current and charged current collisions of neutrinos with the matter background, as well as neutrino advection. In order to mimic fluctuations in the neutrino emission and matter background, and explore their effect on the flavor evolution, we introduce perturbations in the collision term as well as in the vacuum term of the Hamiltonian. Because of such perturbations, the initial symmetry of the neutrino field across the simulation annulus is broken and flavor conversion is qualitatively affected, with regions of larger flavor conversion alternating across the simulation annulus. In addition, neutrino advection is responsible for spreading flavor waves across neighboring spatial regions. Although based on a simplified setup, our findings highlight the importance of modeling neutrino quantum kinetics in multi-dimensions to assess the impact of neutrinos on the physics of compact astrophysical sources and nucleosynthesis.