• DOI:10.1103/PhysRevD.97.103018
• Corpus ID: 54041937

Neutrino flavor transformation in supernova as a probe for nonstandard neutrino-scalar interactions

@article{Yang2018NeutrinoFT,
  title={Neutrino flavor transformation in supernova as a probe for nonstandard neutrino-scalar interactions},
  author={Yue Yang and James P. Kneller},
  journal={Proceedings of The 20th International Workshop on Neutrinos — PoS(NuFACT2018)},
  year={2018}
}

• Yue Yang, J. Kneller
• Published 12 March 2018
• Physics
• Proceedings of The 20th International Workshop on Neutrinos — PoS(NuFACT2018)

We explore the possibility of probing the nonstandard interactions between the neutrino and a hypothetical massive scalar or pseudoscalar via neutrino flavor transformation in supernovae. We find that in ultrarelativistic limit, the effective interaction between the neutrinos does not vanish if neutrinos are Majorana fermions but does vanish if neutrinos are Dirac fermions. The impact of the new neutrino interaction upon the flavor transformation above the neutrinosphere has been calculated in the context of the multi-angle "neutrino bulb model" and we find that the addition of the nonstandard neutrino self-interaction (NSSI) to the ordinary V-A self-interaction between neutrinos is capable of dramatically altering the collective oscillation when its strength is comparable to the standard, V-A, interaction. The effect of flavor-preserving (FP) NSSI is generally to suppress flavor transformation, while the flavor-violating (FV) components are found to promote flavor transformations. The neutrino signal from a Galactic supernova can provide complimentary constraints on scalar/pseudoscalar interactions of neutrinos as well as distinguishing whether the neutrino is a Majorana or Dirac fermion.