On chaoticity of the amplification of the neutrino asymmetry in the early universe

Abstract

We consider numerically the growth of neutrino asymmetry in active-sterile neutrino oscillations in the early universe. It is shown that the final sign of the asymmetry can be highly sensitive to small variations of the oscillation parameters. We find regions which are completely or partially chaotic, but also regions where the sign remains very robust. The consequences for atmospheric neutrino oscillations and primordial nucleosynthesis are then discussed. In the completely chaotic region the predicted He(4)-abundance has an inherent arbitrariness \Delta Y \simeq 0.01.

Comments: 12 pages, 3 eps figures, LaTeX 2.09, uses epsf.sty, submitted to Phys. Lett. B