paper

Many-Body Simulations of the Fast Flavor Instability

arXiv:2507.02040 · doi:10.1103/d6w8-7j9s

Abstract

The neutrino fast flavor instability dominates the evolution of neutrino flavor within the engines of core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers. However, theoretical models of neutrino flavor change that include many-body quantum correlations can differ starkly from similar mean-field calculations. We demonstrate for the first time that the inhomogeneous fast flavor instability is disrupted by many-body correlations using a novel tensor network framework that allows a continuous transition between mean-field and many-body results by tuning the singular value decomposition cutoff value. Generalizing the forward-scattering Hamiltonian to spatially varying conditions, we demonstrate that the timescale of flavor transformation scales logarithmically with system size, suggesting that many-body effects could occur before mean-field instabilities are able to saturate. Our results have significant implications for astrophysical explosion dynamics, nucleosynthesis, and observable neutrino signatures.

Accepted for publication as a Letter in Physical Review D

References in corpus (34)

Cited by in corpus (3)