2008

Neutrino mass spectrum from gravitational waves generated by double neutrino spin-flip in supernovae

Cuesta, Herman J. Mosquera, Lambiase, Gaetano

Understand

The supernova (SN) neutronization phase produces mainly electron ($\nu_e$) neutrinos, the oscillations of which must take place within a few mean-free-paths of their resonance surface located nearby their neutrinosphere.

  • The state-of-the-art on the SN dynamics suggests that a significant part of these $\nu_e$ can convert into right-handed neutrinos in virtue of the interaction of the electrons and the protons flowing with the SN outgoing plasma, whenever the Dirac neutrino magnetic moment be of strength $\mu_\nu < 10^{-11} \mu_{\rm B}$, with $\mu_{\rm B}$ being the Bohr magneton.
  • In the supernova envelope, part of these neutrinos can flip back to the left-handed flavors due to the interaction of the neutrino magnetic moment with the magnetic field in the SN expanding plasma (Kuznetsov & Mikheev 2007; Kuznetsov, Mikheev & Okrugin 2008), a region where the field strength is currently accepted to be $B \gtrsim 10^{13}$ ~G.
  • This type of $\nu$ oscillations were shown to generate powerful gravitational wave (GW) bursts (Mosquera Cuesta 2000, Mosquera Cuesta 2002, Mosquera Cuesta & Fiuza 2004, Loveridge 2004).

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