Collisional flavor pendula and neutrino quantum thermodynamics

Abstract

Neutrinos in core-collapse supernovae and neutron-star mergers are susceptible to flavor instabilities of three kinds: slow, fast, and collisional. Prior work has established mappings of the first two onto abstract mechanical systems in flavor space, respectively named the slow and fast flavor pendula. Here we introduce and analyze the flavor pendulum associated with the third class. We explain our results in terms of the recently developed theory of neutrino quantum thermodynamics. Perhaps our most surprising finding is that there exists a limit in which decoherent interactions drive perfectly coherent flavor conversion.