Quantum Simulation of Collective Neutrino Oscillations in Dense Neutrino Environment

Abstract

Inside dense neutrino gases, such as neutron star mergers or core-collapse supernovae, collective neutrino effects cause the transformation of one neutrino flavour into another. Due to strong neutrino self-interactions in these environments, there is prevalence of flavour swapping. Considering these environments to be isotropic and homogeneous, we present a study of collective neutrino oscillations by simulating such a system on a noisy quantum simulator (Qiskit AerSimulator) and a quantum processor (ibm\_brisbane). We model the effective Hamiltonian governing neutrino interactions and by applying the Trotter-Suzuki approximation, decompose it into a tractable form suitable for quantum circuit implementation of the time-evolution propagator. Encoding the neutrino state for a system of two- and three-neutrinos onto qubits, we compute the time evolution of the inversion probability relative to the initial product state. Furthermore, we present quantum circuits to evaluate the concurrence as a measure of entanglement between the neutrinos.