Understand
We investigate the collision-induced flavor instability in homogeneous, isotropic, dense neutrino gases in the two-flavor mixing scenario with energy-dependent scattering.
- We uncover a simple expression of the growth rate of this instability in terms of the flavor-decohering collision rates and the electron lepton number distribution of the neutrino.
- This growth rate is common to the neutrinos and antineutrinos of different energies, and is independent of the mass-splitting and vacuum mixing angle of the neutrino, the matter density, and the neutrino density, although the initial amplitude of the unstable oscillation mode can be suppressed by a large matter density.
- Our results suggest that neutrinos are likely to experience collision-induced flavor conversions deep inside a core-collapse supernova even when both the fast and slow collective flavor oscillations are suppressed.