Neutrino-anti-neutrino instability in dense neutrino systems, with applications to the early universe and to supernovae

Abstract

We exhibit a new instability that leads to "fast" coherent neutrino-antineutrino mixing in a dense neutrino cloud, arising from the standard four-Fermi interaction induced by Z exchange, and overlooked in the big existing literature on fast processes in this venue. It can play an essential role in creation of an abundance of pseudoscalar mesons of mass in the KeV range in the early universe, at temperatures in the range 10-100 MeV. Also it can overpower existing calculations in the "neutrino bulb" regions of the supernova cloud.