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Updated: May 18, 2026

Setting Limits on Supersymmetry Using Simplified Models
Published on: November 15, 2013
Instability in the dense supernova neutrino gas with flavor-dependent angular distributions
Alessandro Mirizzi1, Pasquale Dario Serpico
1II Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Hamburg, Luruper Chaussee 149, 22761 Hamburg, Germany.
Abstract:
The usual description of self-induced flavor conversions for neutrinos (ν's) in supernovae is based on the simplified assumption that all the ν's of the different species are emitted "half-isotropically" by a common neutrinosphere, in analogy to a blackbody emission. However, realistic supernova simulations show that ν angular distributions at decoupling are far from being half-isotropic and, above all, are flavor dependent. We show that flavor-dependent angular distributions may lead to crossing points in the angular spectra of different ν species (where F(ν(e))=F(ν(x)) and F(ν(e))=F(ν(x))) around which a new multiangle instability can develop. To characterize this effect, we carry out a linearized flavor stability analysis for different supernova neutrino angular distributions. We find that this instability can shift the onset of the flavor conversions toward low radii and produce a smearing of the splitting features found with trivial ν emission models. As a result the spectral differences among ν's of different flavors could be strongly reduced.
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