Fast flavor oscillations in dense neutrino media with collisions

We investigate the impact of the nonzero neutrino splitting and elastic neutrino-nucleon collisions on fast neutrino oscillations. Our calculations confirm that a small neutrino mass splitting and the neutrino mass hierarchy have very little effect on fast oscillation waves. We also demonstrate explicitly that fast oscillations remain largely unaffected for the time/distance scales that are much smaller than the neutrino mean free path but are damped on larger scales. This damping originates from both the direct modification of the dispersion relation of the oscillation waves in the neutrino medium and the flattening of the neutrino angular distributions over time. Our work suggests that fast neutrino oscillation waves produced near the neutrino sphere can propagate essentially unimpeded which may have ramifications in various aspects of the supernova physics.

Automated summary

Our study investigates the impact of nonzero neutrino splitting and elastic neutrino-nucleon collisions on fast neutrino oscillations. We found that small neutrino mass splitting and the neutrino mass hierarchy have minimal effects on fast oscillation waves, which can propagate near the neutrino sphere essentially unimpeded but are damped on larger scales. This damping is due to modifications in the dispersion relation of the oscillation waves in the neutrino medium and flattening of the neutrino angular distributions over time.