Fast Flavor Depolarization of Supernova Neutrinos

Abstract

Flavor-dependent neutrino emission is critical to the evolution of a supernova and its neutrino signal. In the dense anisotropic interior of the star, neutrino-neutrino forward-scattering can lead to fast collective neutrino oscillations, which has striking consequences. We present a theory of fast flavor depolarization, explaining how neutrino flavor differences become smaller, i.e., depolarize, due to diffusion to smaller angular scales. We show that transverse relaxation determines the epoch of this irreversible depolarization. We give a method to compute the depolarized fluxes, presenting an explicit formula for simple initial conditions, which can be a crucial input for supernova theory and neutrino phenomenology.

Comments: 4+4+3 pages; 4+4 figures; v2:minor changes, references added, comments welcome; v3: approx. identical to published version with supplemental material with analytical and numerical details