Numerical and Physical Stability of Supernova Neutrino Flavor Evolution

Abstract

This paper examines neutrino flavor evolution outside a supernova neutrinosphere using a one-dimensional model that retains the non-linear nature of neutrino-neutrino interactions as well as some aspects of the full geometry. In some limiting cases analytic results can be obtained that display different behavior from their counterparts in (linear) solar neutrino flavor evolution. For more general cases, numerical solutions require extended numerical algorithms to achieve stable solutions, and these solutions exhibit standard chaotic behavior.