Neutrino fast flavor oscillations with moments: linear stability analysis and application to neutron star mergers

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Froustey, Julien, Richers, Sherwood, Grohs, Evan, Flynn, Samuel, Foucart, Francois, Kneller, James P., McLaughlin, Gail C.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917891713007616
author Froustey, Julien
Richers, Sherwood
Grohs, Evan
Flynn, Samuel
Foucart, Francois
Kneller, James P.
McLaughlin, Gail C.
author_facet Froustey, Julien
Richers, Sherwood
Grohs, Evan
Flynn, Samuel
Foucart, Francois
Kneller, James P.
McLaughlin, Gail C.
contents 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.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_11968
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Neutrino fast flavor oscillations with moments: linear stability analysis and application to neutron star mergers
Froustey, Julien
Richers, Sherwood
Grohs, Evan
Flynn, Samuel
Foucart, Francois
Kneller, James P.
McLaughlin, Gail C.
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
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.
title Neutrino fast flavor oscillations with moments: linear stability analysis and application to neutron star mergers
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.11968