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

Sep, 2008
14 pages
Published in:
  • Astrophys.J. 689 (2008) 371
e-Print:

Citations per year

200920132017202120242013
Abstract: (arXiv)
The supernova (SN) neutronization phase produces mainly electron (νe\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 νe\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 μν<1011μB\mu_\nu < 10^{-11} \mu_{\rm B}, with μB\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 B1013B \gtrsim 10^{13} ~G. This type of ν\nu oscillations were shown to generate powerful gravitational wave (GW) bursts (Mosquera Cuesta 2000, Mosquera Cuesta 2002, Mosquera Cuesta & Fiuza 2004, Loveridge 2004). If such double spin-flip mechanism does run into action inside the SN core, then the release of both the oscillation-produced νμ\nu_\mus, ντ\nu_\taus and the GW pulse generated by the coherent ν\nu spin-flips provides a unique emission offset ΔTGWemissionν=0\Delta T^{emission}_{\rm GW} \leftrightarrow \nu = 0 for measuring the ν\nu travel time to Earth. As massive ν\nus get noticeably delayed on its journey to Earth with respect to the Einstein GW they generated during the reconversion transient, then the accurate measurement of this time-of-flight delay by SNEWS + LIGO, VIRGO, BBO, DECIGO, etc., might readily assess the absolute ν\nu mass spectrum.
  • gravitational waves
  • elementary particles
  • neutrinos
  • stars: magnetic fields
  • (stars:) supernovae: general
  • methods: data analysis
  • neutrino: magnetic moment
  • neutrino: right-handed
  • neutrino: supernova
  • neutrino: oscillation