Quasi-steady flavor configuration of multi-energy neutrino ensembles

Abstract

Neutrino flavor conversion profoundly impacts the explosion mechanism and multi-messenger emission of core-collapse supernovae. Yet, state-of-the-art hydrodynamic simulations of neutrino-dense astrophysical environments cannot account for neutrino quantum kinetics, necessitating subgrid schemes to model the impact of neutrino self-interaction on the quasi-steady flavor configuration. We present semi-analytic approximations for the outcomes of both slow and fast flavor conversions in quasi-homogeneous systems with periodic boundary conditions. Independent of the mass ordering, our ansatz demonstrates excellent agreement with multi-angle and multi-energy solutions of the neutrino kinetic equations across a wide range of representative (anti)neutrino distributions.

arXiv comment12 pages, including 7 figures and 1 appendix. Matches version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D