Two-Moment Neutrino Flavor Transformation with applications to the Fast Flavor Instability in Neutron Star Mergers

Understand

Multi-messenger astrophysics has produced a wealth of data with much more to come in the future.

• This enormous data set will reveal new insights into the physics of core collapse supernovae, neutron star mergers, and many other objects where it is actually possible, if not probable, that new physics is in operation.
• To tease out different possibilities, we will need to analyze signals from photons, neutrinos, gravitational waves, and chemical elements.
• This task is made all the more difficult when it is necessary to evolve the neutrino component of the radiation field and associated quantum-mechanical property of flavor in order to model the astrophysical system of interest -- a numerical challenge that has not been addressed to this day.