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We calculate the response of a lead-based detector, such as the Helium and Lead Observatory (HALO) or its planned upgrade HALO-1kt to a galactic core-collapse supernova. We pay particular attention to the time dependence of the reaction rates. All reaction rates decrease as the neutrino luminosity exponentially drops during the cooling period but the ratio of one-neutron (1n) to two-neutron (2n) event rates in HALO is independent of this overall decrease. Nevertheless, we find that this ratio still changes with time due to the changing character of neutrino flavor transformations with the evolving conditions in the supernova. In the case of inverted hierarchy, this is caused by the fact that the spectral splits become less and less sharp with the decreasing luminosity. In the case of normal hierarchy, it is caused by the passage of the shock wave through the Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein resonance region. However, in both cases, we find that the change in the ratio of 1n to 2n event rates is limited to a few percent., Comment: 12 pages with 7 figures

We consider the many-body system of neutrinos interacting with each other through neutral current weak force. Emerging many-body effects in such a system could play important roles in some astrophysical sites such as the core collapse supernovae. In the literature this many-body system is usually treated within the mean field approximation which is an effective one-body description based on omitting entangled neutrino states. In this paper, we consider the original many-body system in an effective two flavor mixing scenario under the single angle approximation and present a solution without using the mean field approximation. Our solution is formulated around a special class of many-body eigenstates which do not undergo any level crossings as the neutrino self interaction rate decreases while the neutrinos radiate from the supernova. In particular, an initial state which consists of electron neutrinos and antineutrinos of an orthogonal flavor can be entirely decomposed in terms of those eigenstates. Assuming that the conditions are perfectly adiabatic so that the evolution of these eigenstates follow their variation with the interaction rate, we show that this initial state develops a spectral split at exactly the same energy predicted by the mean field formulation., Comment: Published version. 30 pages, 11 figures

We show that the spectral split of a neutrino ensemble which initially consists of electron type neutrinos, is analogous to the BCS-BEC crossover already observed in ultra cold atomic gas experiments. Such a neutrino ensemble mimics the deleptonization burst of a core collapse supernova. Although these two phenomena belong to very different domains of physics, the propagation of neutrinos from highly interacting inner regions of the supernova to the vacuum is reminiscent of the evolution of Cooper pairs between weak and strong interaction regimes during the crossover. The Hamiltonians and the corresponding many-body states undergo very similar transformations if one replaces the pair quasispin of the latter with the neutrino isospin of the former., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures

We consider collective oscillations of neutrinos, which are emergent nonlinear flavor evolution phenomena instigated by neutrino-neutrino interactions in astrophysical environments with sufficiently high neutrino densities. We investigate the symmetries of the problem in the full three flavor mixing scheme and in the exact many-body formulation by including the effects of CP violation and neutrino magnetic moment. We show that, similar to the two flavor scheme, several dynamical symmetries exist for three flavors in the single-angle approximation if the net electron background in the environment and the effects of the neutrino magnetic moment are negligible. Moreover, we show that these dynamical symmetries are present even when the CP symmetry is violated in neutrino oscillations. We explicitly write down the constants of motion through which these dynamical symmetries manifest themselves in terms of the generators of the SU(3) flavor transformations. We also show that the effects due to the CP-violating Dirac phase factor out of the many-body evolution operator and evolve independently of nonlinear flavor transformations if neutrino electromagnetic interactions are ignored. In the presence of a strong magnetic field, CP-violating effects can still be considered independently provided that an effective definition for neutrino magnetic moment is used.

The effective many-body Hamiltonian which describes vacuum oscillations and self interactions of neutrinos in a two flavor mixing scheme under the single angle approximation has the same dynamical symmetries as the well known BCS pairing Hamiltonian. These dynamical symmetries manifest themselves in terms of a set of constants of motion and can be useful in formulating the collective oscillation modes in an intuitive way. In particular, we show that a neutrino spectral split can be simply viewed as an avoided level crossing between the eigenstates of a mean field Hamiltonian which includes a Lagrange multiplier in order to fix the value of an exact many-body constant of motion. We show that the same dynamical symmetries also exist in the three neutrino mixing scheme by explicitly writing down the corresponding constants of motion., Comment: To appear in the proceedings of CETUP* 2013

Using the primordial helium abundance, an upper limit to the magnetic moments for Dirac neutrinos had been provided by imposing restrictions on the number of the additional helicity states. Considering non-thermal photons produced in the decay of the heavy sterile mass eigenstates due to the neutrino magnetic moment, we explore the constraints imposed by the observed abundances of all the light elements produced during the Big Bang nucleosynthesis., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, minor corrections added, accepted for publication in PRD

Following a recent suggestion of axion cooling of photons between the nucleosynthesis and recombination epochs in the Early Universe, we investigate a hybrid model with both axions and relic supersymmetric particles. In this model we demonstrate that the 7Li abundance can be consistent with observations without destroying the important concordance of deuterium abundance., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

We consider the flavor evolution of a dense neutrino gas by taking into account both vacuum oscillations and self interactions of neutrinos. We examine the system from a many-body perspective as well as from the point of view of an effective one-body description formulated in terms of the neutrino polarization vectors. We show that, in the single angle approximation, both the many-body picture and the effective one-particle picture possess several constants of motion. We write down these constants of motion explicitly in terms of the neutrino isospin operators for the many-body case and in terms of the polarization vectors for the effective one-body case. The existence of these constants of motion is a direct consequence of the fact that the collective neutrino oscillation Hamiltonian belongs to the class of Gaudin Hamiltonians. This class of Hamiltonians also includes the (reduced) BCS pairing Hamiltonian describing superconductivity. We point out the similarity between the collective neutrino oscillation Hamiltonian and the BCS pairing Hamiltonian. The constants of motion manifest the exact solvability of the system. Borrowing the well established techniques of calculating the exact BCS spectrum, we present exact eigenstates and eigenvalues of both the many-body and the effective one-particle Hamiltonians describing the collective neutrino oscillations. For the effective one-body case, we show that spectral splits of neutrinos can be understood in terms of the adiabatic evolution of some quasi-particle degrees of freedom from a high density region where they coincide with flavor eigenstates to the vacuum where they coincide with mass eigenstates. We write down the most general consistency equations which should be satisfied by the effective one-body eigenstates and show that they reduce to the spectral split consistency equations for the appropriate initial conditions., Comment: 26 pages with one figure. Published version

Pairing plays a crucial role in nuclear spectra and attempts to describe it has a long history in nuclear physics. The limiting case in which all single particle states are degenerate, but with different s-wave pairing strengths was only recently solved. In this strong coupling limit the nuclear pairing Hamiltonian also exhibits a supersymmetry. Another solution away from those limits, namely two non-degenerate single particle states with different pairing strengths, was also given. In this contribution these developments are summarized and difficulties with possible generalizations to more single particle states and d-wave pairing are discussed., Comment: 6 pages of LATEX, to be published in the Proceedings of the "10th Int. Spring Seminar on Nuclear Physics: New Quests in Nuclear Structure", Vietri Sul Mare, May 21-25, 2010

A simple model of nucleons coupled to angular momentum zero (s-pairs) occupying the valance shell of a semi-magic nuclei is considered. The model has a separable, orbit dependent pairing interaction which dominates over the kinetic term. It is shown that such an interaction leads to an exactly solvable model whose (0+) eigenstates and energies can be computed very easily with the help of the algebraic Bethe ansatz method. It is also shown that the model has a supersymmetry which connects the spectra of some semimagic nuclei. The results obtained from this model for the semimagic Ni isotopes from 58Ni to 68Ni are given. In addition, a new and easier technique for calculating the energy eigenvalues from the Bethe ansatz equations is also presented., Comment: Talk given at the International Conference on Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics: From Stable Beams to Exotic Nuclei, Cappadocia, June 2008

We give the exact solution of orbit dependent nuclear pairing problem between two non-degenerate energy levels using the Bethe ansatz technique. Our solution reduces to previously solved cases in the appropriate limits including Richardson's treatment of reduced pairing in terms of rational Gaudin algebra operators., Comment: 4 pages with 1 figure

We show that nuclear pairing Hamiltonian exhibits supersymmetry in the strong-coupling limit. The underlying supersymmetric quantum mechanical structure explains the degeneracies between the energies of the N and Nmax-N+1 pair eigenstates. The supersymmetry transformations connecting these states are given., Comment: 4 pages of REVTEX, one figure

We apply the algebraic Bethe ansatz technique to the nuclear pairing problem with orbit dependent coupling constants and degenerate single particle energy levels. We find the exact energies and eigenstates. We show that for a given shell, there are degeneracies between the states corresponding to less and more than half full shell. We also provide a technique to solve the equations of Bethe ansatz., Comment: 15 pages of REVTEX with 2 eps figures

An algebraic approach to the neutrino propagation in dense media is presented. The Hamiltonian describing a gas of neutrinos interacting with each other and with background fermions is written in terms of the appropriate SU(N) operators, where N is the number of neutrino flavors. The evolution of the resulting many-body problem is formulated as a coherent-state path integral. Some commonly used approximations are shown to represent the saddle-point solution of the path integral for the full many-body system., Comment: 16 pages of REVTEX

Three well-known solutions of the Gaudin equation are obtained under a set of standard assumptions. By relaxing one of these assumptions we introduce a class of mutually commuting Hamiltonians based on a different solution of the Gaudin equation. Application of the algebraic Bethe ansatz technique to diagonalize these Hamiltonians reveals a new infinite dimensional complex Lie algebra., Comment: 15 pages of LATEX

We introduce a new class of exactly solvable boson pairing models using the technique of Richardson and Gaudin. Analytical expressions for all energy eigenvalues and first few energy eigenstates are given. In addition, another solution to Gaudin's equation is also mentioned. A relation with the Calogero-Sutherland model is suggested., Comment: 9 pages of Latex. In the proceedings of Blueprints for the Nucleus: From First Principles to Collective Motion: A Festschrift in Honor of Professor Bruce Barrett, Istanbul, Turkey, 17-23 May 2004

We introduce a class of exactly solvable boson models. We give explicit analytic expressions for energy eigenvalues and eigenvectors for an sd-boson Hamiltonian, which is related to the SO(6) chain of the Interacting Boson Model Hamiltonian., Comment: 8 pages of LATEX