Search

A Galactic core-collapse supernova (CCSN) is likely to be observed in neutrino detectors around the world minutes to hours before the electromagnetic radiation arrives. The SNEWS2.0 network of neutrino and dark matter detectors aims to use the relative arrival times of the neutrinos at the different experiments to point back to the supernova. One of the simplest methods to calculate the CCSN direction is to use the first neutrino events detected through the inverse beta decay (IBD) process, $\overline{\nu}_e p\rightarrow e^+n$. We will consider neutrino detectors sensitive to IBD interactions with low backgrounds. The difference in signal arrival times between a large and a small detector will be biased, however, with the first event at the smaller detector, on average, arriving later than that at the larger detector. This bias can be mitigated by using these first events in a data-driven approach without recourse to simulations or models. In this article, we demonstrate this method and its uncertainty estimate using pairs of detectors of different sizes and with different supernova distances. Finally, we use this method to calculate probability skymaps using four detectors (Super-Kamiokande, JUNO, LVD, and SNO+) and show that the calculated probabilities yield appropriate confidence intervals. The resulting skymaps should be useful for the multi-messenger community to follow up on the SNEWS2.0 Galactic CCSN neutrino alert., Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures

A computationally efficient method for calculating the transport of neutrino flavor in simulations is to use angular moments of the neutrino one-body reduced density matrix, i.e., `quantum moments'. As with any moment-based radiation transport method, a closure is needed if the infinite tower of moment evolution equations is truncated. We derive a general parameterization of a quantum closure and the limits the parameters must satisfy in order for the closure to be physical. We then derive from multi-angle calculations the evolution of the closure parameters in two test cases which we then progressively insert into a moment evolution code and show how the parameters affect the moment results until the full multi-angle results are reproduced. This parameterization paves the way to setting prescriptions for genuine quantum closures adapted to neutrino transport in a range of situations., Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures

Quantum angular moment transport schemes are an important avenue toward describing neutrino flavor mixing phenomena in dense astrophysical environments such as supernovae and merging neutron stars. Successful implementation will require new closure relations that go beyond those used in classical transport. In this paper, we derive the first analytic expression for a quantum M1 closure, valid in the limit of small flavor coherence, based on the maximum entropy principle. We verify that the resulting closure relation has the appropriate limits and characteristic speeds in the diffusive and free-streaming regimes. We then use this new closure in a moment linear stability analysis to search for fast flavor instabilities in a binary neutron star merger simulation and find better results as compared with previously designed, ad hoc, semi-classical closures., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure (Supp. Material: 4 pages, 2 figures)

Neutrino evolution, of great importance in environments such as neutron star mergers (NSMs) because of their impact on explosive nucleosynthesis, is still poorly understood due to the high complexity and variety of possible flavor conversion mechanisms. In this study, we focus on so-called "fast flavor oscillations", which can occur on timescales of nanoseconds and are connected to the existence of a crossing between the angular distributions of electron (anti)neutrinos. Based on the neutrino radiation field drawn from a three dimensional neutron star merger simulation, we use an extension of the two-moment formalism of neutrino quantum kinetics, and perform a linear stability analysis to determine the characteristics of fast flavor instabilities across the simulation. We compare the results to local (centimeter-scale) three-dimensional two-flavor simulations using either a moment method or a particle-in-cell architecture. We get generally good agreement in the instability growth rate and typical instability lengthscale, although the imperfections of the closure used in moment methods remain to be better understood., Comment: Proceedings of XVIII International Conference on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics (TAUP2023)

Providing an accurate modeling of neutrino physics in dense astrophysical environments such as binary neutron star mergers presents a challenge for hydrodynamic simulations. Nevertheless, understanding how flavor transformation can occur and affect the dynamics, the mass ejection, and the nucleosynthesis will need to be achieved in the future. Computationally expensive, large-scale simulations frequently evolve the first classical angular moments of the neutrino distributions. By promoting these quantities to matrices in flavor space, we develop a linear stability analysis of fast flavor oscillations using only the first two "quantum" moments, which notably requires generalizing the classical closure relations that appropriately truncate the hierarchy of moment equations in order to treat quantum flavor coherence. After showing the efficiency of this method on a well-understood test situation, we perform a systematic search of the occurrence of fast flavor instabilities in a neutron star merger simulation. We discuss the successes and shortcomings of moment linear stability analysis, as this framework provides a time-efficient way to design and study better closure prescriptions in the future., Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures. v2: added references, updated appendix C

The flavor evolution of neutrinos in core collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers is a critically important unsolved problem in astrophysics. Following the electron flavor evolution of the neutrino system is essential for calculating the thermodynamics of compact objects as well as the chemical elements they produce. Accurately accounting for flavor transformation in these environments is challenging for a number of reasons, including the large number of neutrinos involved, the small spatial scale of the oscillation, and the nonlinearity of the system. We take a step in addressing these issues by presenting a method which describes the neutrino fields in terms of angular moments. We apply our moment method to neutron star merger conditions and show it simulates fast flavor neutrino transformation in a region where this phenomenon is expected to occur. By comparing with particle-in-cell calculations we show that the moment method is able to capture the three phases of growth, saturation, and decoherence, and correctly predicts the lengthscale of the fastest growing fluctuations in the neutrino field., Comment: Version accepted in Physics Letters B; 10 pages, 5 figures, 1 table

The last decade has brought about a profound transformation in multimessenger science. Ten years ago, facilities had been built or were under construction that would eventually discover the nature of objects in our universe could be detected through multiple messengers. Nonetheless, multimessenger science was hardly more than a dream. The rewards for our foresight were finally realized through IceCube's discovery of the diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux, the first observation of gravitational waves by LIGO, and the first joint detections in gravitational waves and photons and in neutrinos and photons. Today we live in the dawn of the multimessenger era. The successes of the multimessenger campaigns of the last decade have pushed multimessenger science to the forefront of priority science areas in both the particle physics and the astrophysics communities. Multimessenger science provides new methods of testing fundamental theories about the nature of matter and energy, particularly in conditions that are not reproducible on Earth. This white paper will present the science and facilities that will provide opportunities for the particle physics community renew its commitment and maintain its leadership in multimessenger science., Comment: 174 pages, 12 figures. Contribution to Snowmass 2021. Solicited white paper from CF07. Comments and endorsers welcome. Still accepting contributions (contact editors)

At the present time even the most sophisticated, multi-dimensional simulations of core-collapse supernovae do not (self-consistently) include neutrino flavor transformation. This physics is missing despite the importance of neutrinos in the core-collapse explosion paradigm. Because of this dependence, any flavor transformation that occurs in the region between the proto-neutron star and the shock could result in major effects upon the dynamics of the explosion. We present the first hydrodynamic core-collapse supernova simulation which simultaneously includes flavor transformation of the free-streaming neutrinos in the neutrino transport. These oscillation calculations are dynamically updated and evolve self-consistently alongside the hydrodynamics. Using a $M=20\;{\rm M_{\odot}}$ progenitor, we find that while the oscillations have an effect on the neutrino emission and the heating rates, flavor transformation alone does not lead to a successful explosion of this progenitor in spherical symmetry., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

Neutrinos play a critical role of transporting energy and changing the lepton density within core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers. The quantum kinetic equations (QKEs) combine the effects of neutrino-matter interactions treated in classical Boltzmann transport with the neutrino flavor-changing effects treated in neutrino oscillation calculations. We present a method for extending existing neutrino interaction rates to full QKE source terms for use in numerical calculations. We demonstrate the effects of absorption and emission by nucleons and nuclei, electron scattering, electron-positron pair annihilation, nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung, neutrino-neutrino scattering. For the first time, we include all these collision terms self-consistently in a simulation of the full isotropic QKEs in conditions relevant to core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers. For our choice of parameters, the long-term evolution of the neutrino distribution function proceeds similarly with and without the oscillation term, though with measurable differences. We demonstrate that electron scattering, nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung processes, and four-neutrino processes dominate flavor decoherence in the protoneutron star (PNS), absorption dominates near the shock, and all of the considered processes except elastic nucleon scattering are relevant in the decoupling region. Finally, we propose an effective decoherence opacity that at most energies predicts decoherence rates to within a factor of 10 in our model PNS and within 20% outside of the PNS., Comment: Fixed typographical errors mentioned in https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.129902 and added a reference

It has recently been demonstrated analytically that the two-point correlation function for pairs of neutrinos may contain information about the size of the proto-neutron star formed in a Galactic core-collapse supernova. The information about the size of the source emerges via the neutrino equivalent of intensity interferometry originally used by Hanbury-Brown and Twiss with photons to measure the radii of stars. However the analytic demonstration of neutrino intensity interferometry with supernova neutrinos made a number of approximations: that the two neutrinos had equal energies, the neutrinos were emitted at simultaneous times from two points and were detected simultaneously at two detection points that formed a plane with the emission points. These approximations need to be relaxed in order to better determine the feasibility of neutrino intensity interferometry for supernovae neutrinos in a more realistic scenario. In this paper we further investigate the feasibility of intensity interferometry for supernova neutrinos by relaxing all the approximations made in the earlier study. We find that, while relaxing any one assumption reduces the correlation signal, the relaxation of the assumption of equal times of detection is by far the largest detrimental factor. For neutrino energies of order $\sim$15 MeV and a supernova distance of L = 10 kpc, we show that in order to observe the interference pattern in the two-point correlation function of the neutrino pairs, the timing resolution of a detector needs to be on the order of $\lesssim 10^{-21}\;{\rm s}$ if the initial neutrino wave packet has a size of $\sigma_x \sim 10^{-11}\;{\rm cm}$.

We explore the possibility of probing the nonstandard interactions between the neutrino and a hypothetical massive scalar or pseudoscalar via neutrino flavor transformation in supernovae. We find that in the ultrarelativistic limit, the effective interaction between the neutrinos vanishes if neutrinos are Dirac fermions but not if they are Majorana fermions. The impact of the new neutrino interaction upon the flavor transformation above the neutrinosphere is calculated in the context of the multi-angle "neutrino bulb model". We find that the addition of the nonstandard neutrino self-interaction (NSSI) to the ordinary V-A self-interaction between neutrinos is capable of dramatically altering the collective oscillations when its strength is comparable to the standard, V-A, interaction. The effect of flavor-preserving (FP) NSSI is generally to suppress flavor transformation, while the flavor-violating (FV) interactions are found to promote flavor transformations. If the neutrino signal from a Galactic supernova can be sufficiently well understood, supernova neutrinos can provide complimentary constraints on scalar/pseudoscalar interactions of neutrinos as well as distinguishing whether the neutrino is a Majorana or Dirac fermion., Comment: 29 pages, 12 figures

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the only supernova from which we have detected neutrinos - SN 1987A. The twenty or so neutrinos that were detected were mined to great depth in order to determine the events that occurred in the explosion and to place limits upon all manner of neutrino properties. Since 1987 the scale and sensitivity of the detectors capable of identifying neutrinos from a Galactic supernova have grown considerably so that current generation detectors are capable of detecting of order ten thousand neutrinos for a supernova at the Galactic Center. Next generation detectors will increase that yield by another order of magnitude. Simultaneous with the growth of neutrino detection capability, our understanding of how massive stars explode and how the neutrino interacts with hot and dense matter has also increased by a tremendous degree. The neutrino signal will contain much information on all manner of physics of interest to a wide community. In this review we describe the expected features of the neutrino signal, the detectors which will detect it, and the signatures one might try to look for in order to get at these physics., Comment: 78 pages, 20 figures, 2 tables; invited review for Journal of Physics G

A very massive star with a carbon-oxygen core in the range of $64$ M$_{\odot}

The strong gravitational field around a proto-neutron star can modify the neutrino flavor transformations that occur above the neutrinosphere via three General Relativistic (GR) effects: time dilation, energy redshift, and trajectory bending. Depending on the compactness of the central object, the neutrino self-interaction potential is up to three times as large as that without GR principally due to trajectory bending which increases the intersection angles between different neutrino trajectories, and time dilation which changes the fluxes. We determine whether GR effects are important for flavor transformation during the different epochs of a supernova by using multi-angle flavor transformation calculations and consider a density profile and neutrino spectra representative of both the accretion and cooling phases. We find the GR effects are smaller during the accretion phase due to low compactness of the proto-neutron star and merely delay the decoherence; the neutrino bipolar oscillations during the cooling phase are also delayed due to the GR effects but the delay may be more important because the delay occurs at radii where it might alter the nucleosynthesis in the neutrino driven wind., Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures

Intensity interferometry is a technique that has been used to measure the size of sources ranging from the quark-gluon plasma formed in heavy ion collisions to the radii of stars. We investigate using the same technique to measure proto-neutron star (PNS) radii with the neutrino signal received from a core-collapse supernovae. Using a full wave-packet analysis, including the neutrino mass for the first time, we derive criteria where the effect can be expected to provide the desired signal, and find that neutrinos from the next Galactic supernova should contain extractable PNS radius information., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 1 ancillary file of derivations. Version updated to match PRL publication

During the accretion phase of a core-collapse supernovae, large amplitude turbulence is generated by the combination of the standing accretion shock instability and convection driven by neutrino heating. The turbulence directly affects the dynamics of the explosion, but there is also the possibility of an additional, indirect, feedback mechanism due to the effect turbulence can have upon neutrino flavor evolution and thus the neutrino heating. In this paper we consider the effect of turbulence during the accretion phase upon neutrino evolution, both numerically and analytically. Adopting representative supernova profiles taken from the accretion phase of a supernova simulation, we find the numerical calculations exhibit no effect from turbulence. We explain this absence using two analytic descriptions: the Stimulated Transition model and the Distorted Phase Effect model. In the Stimulated Transition model turbulence effects depend upon six different lengthscales, and three criteria must be satisfied between them if one is to observe a change in the flavor evolution due to Stimulated Transition. We further demonstrate that the Distorted Phase Effect depends upon the presence of multiple semi-adiabatic MSW resonances or discontinuities that also can be expressed as a relationship between three of the same lengthscales. When we examine the supernova profiles used in the numerical calculations we find the three Stimulated Transition criteria cannot be satisfied, independent of the form of the turbulence power spectrum, and that the same supernova profiles lack the multiple semi-adiabatic MSW resonances or discontinuities necessary to produce a Distorted Phase Effect. Thus we conclude that even though large amplitude turbulence is present in supernova during the accretion phase, it has no effect upon neutrino flavor evolution., Comment: Minor changes cf. v1

Despite their use as cosmological distance indicators and their importance in the chemical evolution of galaxies, the unequivocal identification of the progenitor systems and explosion mechanism of normal type Ia supernova (SN Ia) remains elusive. The leading hypothesis is that such a supernova is a thermonuclear explosion of a carbon-oxygen white dwarf, but the exact explosion mechanism is still a matter of debate. Observation of a galactic SN Ia would be of immense value in answering the many open questions related to these events. One potentially useful source of information about the explosion mechanism and progenitor is the neutrino signal. In this paper we compute the expected neutrino signal from a gravitationally confined detonation (GCD) explosion scenario for a SN~Ia and show how the flux at Earth contains features in time and energy unique to this scenario. We then calculate the expected event rates in the Super-K, Hyper-K, JUNO, DUNE, and IceCube detectors and find both Hyper-K and IceCube would see a few events for a GCD supernova at 1 kpc or closer, while Super-K, JUNO, and DUNE would see a events if the supernova were closer than ${\sim}0.3$ kpc. The distance and detector criteria needed to resolve the time and spectral features arising from the explosion mechanism, neutrino production, and neutrino oscillation processes are also discussed. The neutrino signal from the GCD is then compared with the signal from a deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT) explosion model computed previously. We find the overall event rate is the most discriminating feature between the two scenarios followed by the event rate time structure. Using the event rate in the Hyper-K detector alone, the DDT can be distinguished from the GCD at 2$\sigma$ if the distance to the supernova is less than $2.3\;{\rm kpc}$ for a normal mass ordering and $3.6\;{\rm kpc}$ for an inverted ordering., Comment: 35 pages, 29 figures, 3 tables. Edited to match accepted PRD version, results unchanged

The DUNE/LBNF program aims to address key questions in neutrino physics and astroparticle physics. Realizing DUNE's potential to reconstruct low-energy particles in the 10-100 MeV energy range will bring significant benefits for all DUNE's science goals. In neutrino physics, low-energy sensitivity will improve neutrino energy reconstruction in the GeV range relevant for the kinematics of DUNE's long-baseline oscillation program. In astroparticle physics, low-energy capabilities will make DUNE's far detectors the world's best apparatus for studying the electron-neutrino flux from a supernova. This will open a new window to unrivaled studies of the dynamics and neutronization of a star's central core in real time, the potential discovery of the neutrino mass hierarchy, provide new sensitivity to physics beyond the Standard Model, and evidence of neutrino quantum-coherence effects. The same capabilities will also provide new sensitivity to `boosted dark matter' models that are not observable in traditional direct dark matter detectors., Comment: Summary of workshop "Supernova Physics at DUNE" held at Virginia Tech; for more details, see, http://cnp.phys.vt.edu/SNatDUNE/

Nonstandard interactions (NSI) of neutrinos with matter can significantly alter neutrino flavor evolution in supernovae with the potential to impact explosion dynamics, nucleosynthesis, and the neutrinos signal. In this paper, we explore, both numerically and analytically, the landscape of neutrino flavor transformation effects in supernovae due to NSI and find a new, heretofore unseen transformation processes can occur. These new transformations can take place with NSI strengths well below current experimental limits. Within a broad swath of NSI parameter space, we observe symmetric and standard matter-neutrino resonances for supernovae neutrinos, a transformation effect previously only seen in compact object merger scenarios; in another region of the parameter space we find the NSI can induce neutrino collective effects in scenarios where none would appear with only the standard case of neutrino oscillation physics; and in a third region the NSI can lead to the disappearance of the high density Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein resonance. Using a variety of analytical tools, we are able to describe quantitatively the numerical results allowing us to partition the NSI parameter according to the transformation processes observed. Our results indicate nonstandard interactions of supernova neutrinos provide a sensitive probe of beyond the Standard Model physics complementary to present and future terrestrial experiments., Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures

It has long been recognized that the neutrinos detected from the next core-collapse supernova in the Galaxy have the potential to reveal important information about the dynamics of the explosion and the nucleosynthesis conditions as well as allowing us to probe the properties of the neutrino itself. The neutrinos emitted from thermonuclear - type Ia - supernovae also possess the same potential, although these supernovae are dimmer neutrino sources. For the first time, we calculate the time, energy, line of sight, and neutrino-flavor-dependent features of the neutrino signal expected from a three-dimensional delayed-detonation explosion simulation, where a deflagration-to-detonation transition triggers the complete disruption of a near-Chandrasekhar mass carbon-oxygen white dwarf. We also calculate the neutrino flavor evolution along eight lines of sight through the simulation as a function of time and energy using an exact three-flavor transformation code. We identify a characteristic spectral peak at $\sim 10$ MeV as a signature of electron captures on copper. This peak is a potentially distinguishing feature of explosion models since it reflects the nucleosynthesis conditions early in the explosion. We simulate the event rates in the Super-K, Hyper-K, JUNO, and DUNE neutrino detectors with the SNOwGLoBES event rate calculation software and also compute the IceCube signal. Hyper-K will be able to detect neutrinos from our model out to a distance of $\sim 10$ kpc. At 1 kpc, JUNO, Super-K, and DUNE would register a few events while IceCube and Hyper-K would register several tens of events., Comment: 44 pages, 29 figures & 2 tables. Updated to match Phys. Rev. D version, including a new event channel discussion and improved IceCube results

A neutrino propagating through fluctuating matter can experience large amplitude transitions between its states. Such transitions occur in supernovae and compact object mergers due to turbulent matter profiles and neutrino self-interactions. In this paper we study, both numerically and analytically, three-flavour neutrino transformation through fluctuating matter built from two and three Fourier modes. We find flavor transformation effects which cannot occur with just two flavours. For the case of two Fourier modes we observe the equivalent of "induced transparency" from quantum optics whereby transitions between a given pair of states are suppressed due to the presence of a resonant mode between another pair. When we add a third Fourier mode we find a new effect whereby the third mode can manipulate the transition probabilities of the two mode case so as to force complete transparency or, alternatively, restore "opacity" meaning the perturbative Hamiltonian regains its ability to induce neutrino flavour transitions. In both applications we find analytic solutions are able to match the amplitude and wavenumber of the numerical results to within a few percent. We then consider a case of turbulence and show how the theory can be used to understand the very different response of a neutrino to what appears to be two, almost identical, instances of turbulence.

On February 23, 1987 we collected 24 neutrinos from the explosion of a blue super-giant star in the Large Magellanic Cloud confirming the basic paradigm of core-collapse supernova. During the many years we have been waiting for a repeat of that momentous day, the number and size of neutrino detectors around the world has grown considerably. If the neutrinos from the next supernova in our Galaxy arrive tomorrow we shall collect upwards of tens of thousands of events and next generation detectors will increase the amount of data we collect by more than an order of magnitude. But it is also now apparent that the message is much more complex than previously thought because many time, energy and neutrino flavor dependent features are imprinted upon the signal either at emission or by the passage through the outer layers of the star. These features arise due to the explosion dynamics, the physics of nuclei at high temperatures and densities, and the properties of neutrinos. In this proceedings I will present some aspects of the physics of supernova neutrino oscillations and what we should expect to observe when the neutrinos from the next Galactic supernova (eventually) arrive., Comment: Talk presented CIPANP2015. 8 pages, LaTeX, 2 eps figures

The neutrinos emitted from the proto-neutron star created in a core-collapse supernova must run through a significant amount of turbulence before exiting the star. Turbulence can modify the flavor evolution of the neutrinos imprinting itself upon the signal detected here at Earth. The turbulence effect upon individual neutrinos, and the correlation between pairs of neutrinos, might exhibit sensitivity to the power spectrum of the turbulence and recent analysis of the turbulence in a two-dimensional hydrodynamical simulation of a core-collapse supernova indicates the power spectrum may not be the Kolmogorov 5/3 inverse power law as has been previously assumed. In this paper we study the effect of non-Kolmogorov turbulence power spectra upon neutrinos from a point source as a function of neutrino energy and turbulence amplitude at a fixed post-bounce epoch. We find the two effects of turbulence upon the neutrinos - the distorted phase effect and the stimulated transitions - both possess strong and weak limits in which dependence upon the power spectrum is absent or evident respectively. Since neutrinos of a given energy will exhibit these two effects at different epochs of the supernova each with evolving strength, we find there is sensitivity to the power spectrum present in the neutrino burst signal from a Galactic supernova., Comment: Matches version accepted by PRD

We apply the model of stimulated neutrino transitions to neutrinos traveling through turbulence on a non-constant density profile. We describe a method to predict the location of large amplitude transitions and demonstrate the effectiveness of this method by comparing to numerical calculations using a model supernova (SN) profile. The important wavelength scales of turbulence, both those that stimulate neutrino transformations and those that suppress them, are presented and discussed. We then examine the effects of changing the parameters of the turbulent spectrum, specifically the root-mean-square amplitude and cutoff wavelength, and show how the stimulated transitions model offers an explanation for the increase in both the amplitude and number of transitions with large amplitude turbulence, as well as a suppression or absence of transitions for long cutoff wavelengths. The method can also be used to predict the location of transitions between antineutrino states which, in the normal hierarchy we are using, will not undergo Mikheev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein (MSW) transitions. Finally, the stimulated neutrino transitions method is applied to the turbulence derived found in a 2D supernova simulation and explains the minimal observed effect on neutrino oscillations in the simulation as as being due to excessive long wavelength modes suppressing transitions and the absence of modes that fulfill the parametric resonance condition., Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures

We derive an analytical solution for the flavor evolution of a neutrino through a turbulent density profile which is found to accurately predict the amplitude and transition wavelength of numerical solutions on a case-by-case basis. The evolution is seen to strongly depend upon those Fourier modes in the turbulence which are approximately the same as the splitting between neutrino eigenvalues. Transitions are strongly enhanced by those Fourier modes in the turbulence which are approximately the same as the splitting between neutrino eigenvalues. We also find a suppression of transitions due to the long wavelength modes when the ratio of their amplitude and the wavenumber is of order, or greater than, the first root of the Bessel function $J_0$., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

(Abridged) In order to decode the neutrino burst signal from a Galactic core-collapse supernova and reveal the complicated inner workings of the explosion we need a thorough understanding of the neutrino flavor evolution from the proto-neutron star outwards. The flavor content of the signal evolves due to both neutrino collective effects and matter effects which can lead to a highly interesting interplay and distinctive spectral features. In this paper we investigate the supernova neutrino flavor evolution in three different progenitors and include collective flavor effects, the evolution of the Mikheyev, Smirnov & Wolfenstein conversion due to the shock wave passage through the star, and the impact of turbulence. In the Oxygen-Neon-Magnesium supernova we find that the impact of turbulence is both brief and slight during a window of 1-2 seconds post bounce. Thus the spectral features of collective and shock effects in the neutrino signals from ONeMg supernovae may be almost turbulence free making them the easiest to interpret. For the more massive progenitors we again find that small amplitude turbulence, up to 10%, leads to a minimal modification of the signal, and the emerging neutrino spectra retain both collective and MSW features. However, when larger amounts of turbulence is added, 30% and 50%, the features of collective and shock wave effects in the high density resonance channel are almost completely obscured at late times. Yet at the same time we find the other mixing channels - the low density resonance channel and the non-resonant channels - begin to develop turbulence signatures. Large amplitude turbulent motions in the outer layers of more massive, iron core-collapse supernovae may obscure the most obvious fingerprints of collective and shock wave effects in the neutrino signal but cannot remove them completely, and additionally bring about new features in the signal., Comment: 30 pages, 33 figures

(Abridged) The transition probabilities describing the evolution of a neutrino with a given energy along some ray through a turbulent supernova are random variates unique to each ray. If the source of the neutrinos were a point then all neutrinos of a given energy and emitted at the same time which were detected in some far off location would have seen the same turbulent profile therefore their transition probabilities would be exactly correlated. But if the source has a finite size then the profiles seen by neutrinos emitted from different points at the source will have seen different turbulence and the correlation of the transition probabilities will be reduced. In this paper we study the correlation of the neutrino transition probabilities through turbulent supernova profiles as a function of the separation between the emission points using an isotropic and an anisotropic power spectrum for the random field used to model the turbulence. The spectral features in the high density resonance mixing channel of the next Galactic supernova neutrino burst may be strongly obscured by large amplitude turbulence when it enters the signal due to the finite size of the source while the presence of features in the low density and non resonant mixing channels may persist, the exact amount depending upon the degree of anisotropy of the turbulence.

The set of transition probabilities for a single neutrino emitted from a point source after passage through a turbulent supernova density profile have been found to be random variates drawn from parent distributions whose properties depend upon the stage of the explosion, the neutrino energy and mixing parameters, the observed channel, and the properties of the turbulence such as the amplitude C*. In this paper we examine the consequences of the recently measured mixing angle \theta_13 upon the neutrino flavor transformation in supernova when passing through turbulence. We find the measurements of a relatively large value of \theta_13 means the neutrinos are relatively immune to small, C* < 1%, amplitude turbulence but as C* increases the turbulence effects grow rapidly and spread to all mixing channels. For C* > 10% the turbulence effects in the high (H) density resonance mixing channels are independent of \theta_13 but non-resonant mixing channels are more sensitive to turbulence when \theta_13 is large.

Large amplitude oscillations between the states of a quantum system can be stimulated by sinusoidal external potentials with frequencies that are similar to the energy level splitting of the states or a fraction thereof. Situations when the applied frequency is equal to an integer fraction of the energy level splittings are known as parametric resonances. We investigate this effect for neutrinos both analytically and numerically for the case of arbitrary numbers of neutrino flavors. We look for environments where the effect may be observed and find that supernova are the one realistic possibility due to the necessity of both large densities and large amplitude fluctuations. The comparison of numerical and analytic results of neutrino propagation through a model supernova reveals it is possible to predict the locations and strengths of the stimulated transitions that occur., Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures

Multi-dimensional core-collapse supernova simulations exhibit turbulence of large amplitude and over large scales. As neutrinos pass through the supernova mantle the turbulence is expected to modify their evolution compared to the case where the explosion is free of turbulence. In this paper we study this turbulence effect upon the neutrinos modelling the turbulence expected from multi-dimensional simulations by adding matter density fluctuations to density profiles taken from one-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations. We investigate the impact upon the supernova neutrino transition probabilities as a function of the neutrino mixing angle theta_13 and turbulence amplitude. In the high (H) resonant channel and with large theta_13 values we find that turbulence is effectively two flavor for fluctuation amplitudes <~ 1% and have identified a new effect due to the combination of turbulence and multiple H resonances that leads to a sensitivity to fluctuations amplitudes as small as ~ 0.001%. At small values of theta_13, beyond the range achievable in Earth based experiments, we find that turbulence leads to new flavor transient effects in the channel where the MSW H resonance occurs. Finally, we investigate large amplitude fluctuations which lead to three flavor effects due to broken HL factorization and significant non-resonant transitions and identify two non-resonant turbulence effects, one depending on the theta_13, and the other independent of this angle and due to the low (L) MSW resonance., Comment: New figure added

It is becoming ever clearer that the neutrino signal from the next supernova in our Galaxy can reveal missing information about the neutrino as well as allowing us to probe the explosion of the star by decoding the temporal and spectral evolution of the flavor composition of the signal. But this information may be lost if turbulence in the supernova `depolarizes' the neutrinos so that the observed flux for each flavor is an equal mixture of the initial - unencoded - spectra. Determining if depolarization occurs is one of the most pressing issues of this field. The most difficult aspect of studying the effect of turbulence upon the neutrinos is the lack of any theoretical models that allow us to understand the results of numerical studies. This paper makes the suggestion that Random Matrix Theory (RMT) may shine some light in this direction and presents support for this the possibility by comparing the distribution of crossing and survival probabilities obtained numerically for some `test case' calculations with the distributions one expects from RMT in the calculable limit of depolarization of N neutrino flavors.

We investigate shock wave effects upon the diffuse supernova neutrino background using dynamic profiles taken from hydrodynamical simulations and calculating the neutrino evolution in three flavors with the S-matrix formalism. We show that the shock wave impact is significant and introduces modifications of the relic fluxes by about $20 \%$ and of the associated event rates at the level of $10-20 \%$. Such an effect is important since it is of the same order as the rate variation introduced when different oscillation scenarios (i.e. hierarchy or $\theta_{13}$) are considered. In addition, due to the shock wave, the rates become less sensitive to collective effects, in the inverted hierarchy and when $\sin^2 2 \theta_{13}$ is between the Chooz limit and $10^{-5}$. We propose a simplified model to account for shock wave effects in future predictions., Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures

We discuss the three neutrino flavor evolution problem with general, flavor-diagonal, matter potentials and a fully parameterized mixing matrix that includes CP violation, and derive expressions for the eigenvalues, mixing angles and phases. We demonstrate that, in the limit that the mu and tau potentials are equal, the eigenvalues and matter mixing angles theta_12 and theta_13 are independent of the CP phase, although theta_23 does have CP dependence. Since we are interested in developing a framework that can be used for S matrix calculations of neutrino flavor transformation, it is useful to work in a basis that contains only off-diagonal entries in the Hamiltonian. We derive the "non-adiabaticity" parameters that appear in the Hamiltonian in this basis. We then introduce the neutrino S matrix, derive its evolution equation and the integral solution. We find that this new Hamiltonian, and therefore the S matrix, in the limit that the mu and tau neutrino potentials are the same, is independent of both theta_23 and the CP violating phase. In this limit, any CP violation in the flavor basis can only be introduced via the rotation matrices, and so effects which derive from the CP phase are then straightforward to determine. We show explicitly that the electron neutrino and electron antineutrino survival probability is independent of the CP phase in this limit. Conversely, if the CP phase is nonzero and mu and tau matter potentials are not equal, then the electron neutrino survival probability cannot be independent of the CP phase.

Rapid progress has been made during recent years in the understanding of the flavour oscillations that occur as neutrinos traverse through supernova. The previous paradigm has given way and it is now clear that the neutrino signals we shall receive from future Galactic supernovae will allow us both to peer inside these extraordinary cosmic events and to probe some of the fundamental properties of these elusive particles. In this review we aim to distill the progress that has been made focusing upon the effects of the dynamic density profile and the emergence of collective flavour oscillations due to neutrino self-interactions., Comment: 48 pages, 14 figures

The neutrinos detected from the next Galactic core-collapse supernova will contain valuable information on the internal dynamics of the explosion. One mechanism leading to a temporal evolution of the neutrino signal is the variation of the induced neutrino flavor mixing driven by changes in the density profile. With one and two dimensional hydrodynamical simulations we identify the behavior and properties of prominent features of the explosion. Using these results we demonstrate the time variation of the neutrino crossing probabilities due to changes in the MSW neutrino transformations as the star explodes by using the S-matrix - Monte Carlo - approach to neutrino propagation. After adopting spectra for the neutrinos emitted from the proto-neutron star we calculate for a Galactic supernova the evolution of the positron spectra within a water Cerenkov detector and the ratio of charged current to neutral current event rates for a heavy water - SNO like - detector and find that these detector signals are feasible probes of a number of explosion features.

We demonstrate that the effects of matter upon neutrino propagation may be recast as the scattering of the initial neutrino wavefunction. Exchanging the differential, Schrodinger equation for an integral equation for the scattering matrix S permits a Monte Carlo method for the computation of S that removes many of the numerical difficulties associated with direct integration techniques.

The simplest, `standard' model of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (SBBN) assumes three light neutrinos (N_nu = 3) and no significant electron neutrino asymmetry, leaving only one adjustable parameter: the baryon to photon ratio eta. The primordial abundance of any one nuclide can, therefore, be used to measure the baryon abundance and the value derived from the observationally inferred primordial abundance of deuterium closely matches that from current, non-BBN data, primarily from the WMAP survey. However, using this same estimate there is a tension between the SBBN-predicted 4He and 7Li abundances and their current, observationally inferred primordial abundances, suggesting that N_nu may differ from the standard model value of three and/or that there may be a non-zero neutral lepton asymmetry (or, that systematic errors in the abundance determinations have been underestimated or overlooked). The differences are not large and the allowed ranges of the BBN parameters permitted by the data are quite small. Within these ranges, the BBN-predicted abundances of D, 3He, 4He, and 7Li are very smooth, monotonic functions of eta, N_nu, and the lepton asymmetry. It is possible to describe the dependencies of these abundances (or powers of them) upon the three parameters by simple, linear fits which, over their ranges of applicability, are accurate to a few percent or better. The fits presented here have not been maximized for their accuracy but, for their simplicity. To identify the ranges of applicability and relative accuracies, they are compared to detailed BBN calculations; their utility is illustrated with several examples. Given the tension within BBN, these fits should prove useful in facilitating studies of the viability of proposals for non-standard physics and cosmology, prior to undertaking detailed BBN calculations., Comment: Submitted to a Focus Issue on Neutrino Physics in New Journal of Physics (www.njp.org)

We have examined the effects of a bound dineutron, n2, upon big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) as a function of its binding energy B_n2. We find a weakly bound dineutron has little impact but as B_n2 increases its presence begins to alter the flow of free nucleons to helium-4. Due to this disruption, and in the absence of changes to other binding energies or fundamental constants, BBN sets a reliable upper limit of B_n2 <~ 2.5 MeV in order to maintain the agreement with the observations of the primordial helium-4 mass fraction and D/H abundance.

We quantify the extent to which extra relativistic energy density can be concealed by a neutrino asymmetry without conflicting with the baryon asymmetry measured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). In the presence of a large electron neutrino asymmetry, slightly more than seven effective neutrinos are allowed by Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and WMAP at 2\sigma. The same electron neutrino degeneracy that reconciles the BBN prediction for the primordial helium abundance with the observationally inferred value also reconciles the LSND neutrino with BBN by suppressing its thermalization prior to BBN., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

We place constraints on the number of relativistic degrees of freedom and on the baryon asymmetry at the epoch of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and at recombination, using cosmic background radiation (CBR) data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), complemented by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Key Project measurement of the Hubble constant, along with the latest compilation of deuterium abundances and measurements of the primordial helium abundance. The agreement between the derived values of these key cosmological and particle physics parameters at these widely separated (in time or redshift) epochs is remarkable. From the combination of CBR and BBN data, we find the 2\sigma ranges for the effective number of neutrinos and for the baryon asymmetry (baryon to photon number ratio \eta) to be 1.7-3.0 and 5.53-6.76 \times 10^{-10}, respectively., Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables

A common property of popular models of quintessence dark energy is the convergence to a common solution from a large range of the initial conditions. We re-examine the popular inverse power-law model of quintessence (where the common solution is dubbed as the 'tracker') with particular attention to the initial conditions for the field and their influence on the evolution. We find that previously derived limits on the parameters of the potential in this model are valid only in a range of initial conditions. A reasonably sharp boundary lies where the initial energy density of the scalar field is equal to that of the background radiation component. An initial quintessence energy density above this equipartition value lead to a solution that will not have joined the tracker solution by the present epoch. These non-tracker solutions possess the property that their present equation of state is very compatible with the observed bounds and independent of the exponent of the potential., Comment: RevTEX4, 9 figures

Current observational data favor cosmological models which differ from the standard model due to the presence of some form of dark energy and, perhaps, by additional contributions to the more familiar dark matter. Primordial nucleosynthesis provides a window on the very early evolution of the universe and constraints from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) can bound the parameters of models for dark matter/energy at redshifts of order ten billion. The spectrum of temperature fluctuations imprinted on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation opens a completely different window on the universe at epochs from redshifts of order ten thousand to nearly the present. The CMB anisotropy spectrum provides constraints on new physics which are independent of, and complementary to those from BBN. Here we consider three classes of models for the dark matter/energy: extra particles which were relativistic during the early evolution of the universe (X); Quintessence models involving a minimally-coupled scalar field (Q); models with a non-minimally coupled scalar field which modify the strength of gravity during the early evolution of the universe (G). We constrain the parameters of these models using data from BBN and the CMB and identify the allowed regions in their parameter spaces consistent with the more demanding joint BBN and CMB constraints. For X and Q such consistency is relatively easy to find; it is more difficult for the G models with an inverse power law potential for the scalar field., Comment: REVTEX4. 17 pages, 7 figures. Replaced with version to be published in PRD

Recent cosmic microwave background (CMB) results from BOOMERANG, MAXIMA, and DASI provide cosmological constraints on new physics that can be competitive with those derived from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). In particular, both CMB and BBN can be used to place limits on models involving neutrino degeneracy and additional relativistic degrees of freedom. However, for the case of the CMB, these constraints are, in general, sensitive to the assumed priors. We examine the CMB and BBN constraints on such models and study the sensitivity of ``new physics" to the assumed priors. If we add a constraint on the age of the universe ($t_0 \ga 11$ Gyr), then for models with a cosmological constant, the range of baryon densities and neutrino degeneracy parameters allowed by the CMB and BBN is fairly robust: $\eta_{10} = 6.0 \pm 0.6$, \deln $\la 6$, $\xi_e \la 0.3$. In the absence of new physics, models without a cosmological constant are only marginally compatible with recent CMB observations (excluded at the 93% confidence level)., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures; version to appear in Phys. Rev. D