Work

Phase-Twist Instability in a Coprecessing Neutrino Plasma

Year: 2026

Type: preprint

Abstract: Dense neutrino plasmas support collective flavor motion. We derive the first explicit dispersion relation about a flavor-nondiagonal background, focusing on the coprecession solution underlying spectral-split formation during the prompt neutrino burst of an electron-capture supernova. We show that slow phase modulations are unstable Goldstone modes, causing the coprecession plane to wobble with increasing amplitude. The instability emerges in the hydrodynamic limit, governed by conservation laws and without resolving flavor-precession resonances. Coprecessing neutrino plasmas resemble magnetized plasmas: a coherent flavor field drives flavor isospins to precess, and the phase-twist instability is the flavor analog of the firehose instability.

Source: arXiv (Cornell University)

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2610.36101

Authors: Fiorillo, Damiano F. G., Mukherjee, Dwaipayan, Dasgupta, Basudeb, Raffelt, Georg G.

Institutions: Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Napoli, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Max Planck Institute for Physics

Language: English

Topic: Neutrino Physics Research

Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare

Awards: G4066435496, G4090823411, EXC 2094: ORIGINS: Vom Ursprung des Universums bis zu den ersten Bausteinen des Lebens, SFB 1258: Neutrinos und Dunkle Materie in der Astro und Teilchenphysik (NDM)

OpenAlex ID: W7224133790

Cites: 4

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Related to: 10