Neutrino oscillations and instabilities in degenerate relativistic astrophysical plasmas

Abstract

We set up a proposal to extend significantly recent works on neutrino-plasma interaction, allowing the possibility of deep degenerate and relativistic electrons, which are often present in compact stars such as high-density white dwarfs. The methodology involves the covariant hydrodynamic formulation of ultradense plasmas. We propose the generalization of previous studies, on the interaction between ion-acoustic waves and resonant neutrino flavor oscillations in a mixed neutrino beam, admitting degenerate and relativistic electron populations. Destabilization of the ion acoustic wave has higher growth rates, thanks to the very high densities present in plasmas under these extreme conditions. We take into account applications to white dwarf stars in the process of collapsing, producing type II supernovas.