The physics of collective neutrino-plasma interactions

Physics – Plasma Physics

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

The most explosive events in the Universe (supernovae, gamma ray bursters) are accompanied by the release of huge fluxes of neutrinos, with intensities in excess of 10^28 W/cm^2, and luminosities up to 10^54 erg/s. Under such extreme conditions, the weak interaction between the background medium and the neutrinos modifies the evolution of the background plasma, which in turns affects the neutrino transport. To include this feedback mechanism, a self-consistent description of the neutrino-plasma interaction is fundamental. After presenting a semi-classical relativistic kinetic theory for the neutrinos coupled with the background plasma, built from the effective potential of neutrinos in a plasma, and the ponderomotive force of the neutrinos, I discuss the wide variety of collective processes associated with the nonlinear coupling of the neutrinos with the collective plasma modes. Analogies between the neutrino electroweak driven instabilities, and electron/photon driven plasma instabilities are established. I focus my discussion on two collective mechanisms occurring in the presence of intense fluxes of neutrinos in a plasma: neutrino Landau damping, and the neutrino streaming instability. The most striking feature of these processes is the anomalous exchange of energy between the neutrinos and the background plasma. I will describe how the anomalous heating due to the neutrino streaming instability can play a significant role in different astrophysical scenarios. In particular, estimates of the anomalous heating in type IIa supernovae will be presented. The impact of collective neutrino-plasma interactions on the long standing problems of the "stalled shock" in SNIIa and the birth velocity of neutron stars will be discussed.

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