Inhomogeneous Kinetic Equation for Mixed Neutrinos: Tracing the Missing Energy
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- PhysRevLett.133.021002
Final published version, 407 KB, PDF document
Flavor-dependent neutrino transport is described by a well-known kinetic equation for occupation-number matrices in flavor space. However, in the context of fast flavor conversion, we identify an unforeseen predicament: the pivotal self-induced exponential growth of small inhomogeneities strongly violates conservation of neutrino-neutrino refractive energy. We prove that it is traded with the huge reservoir of neutrino kinetic energy through gradients of neutrino flavor coherence (the off-diagonal piece of the flavor density matrix) and derive the missing gradient terms. The usual equations remain sufficient to describe flavor evolution, at the cost of renouncing energy conservation, which cannot play any role in explaining the numerically observed final state.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 021002 |
Journal | Physical Review Letters |
Volume | 133 |
Issue number | 2 |
Number of pages | 7 |
ISSN | 0031-9007 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 19 Jul 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
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