UC San Diego

We investigate the effect of matter density fluctuations on supernova collective neutrino flavor oscillations. In particular, we use full multiangle, three-flavor, self-consistent simulations of the evolution of the neutrino flavor field in the envelope of an O-Ne-Mg core-collapse supernova at shock breakout (neutronization neutrino burst) to study the effect of the matter density "bump" left by the He-burning shell. We find a seemingly counterintuitive increase in the overall νe survival probability created by this matter density feature. We discuss this behavior in terms of the interplay between the matter density profile and neutrino collective effects. While our results give new insights into this interplay, they also suggest an immediate consequence for supernova neutrino burst detection: it will be difficult to use a burst signal to extract information on fossil burning shells or other fluctuations of this scale in the matter density profile. Consistent with previous studies, our results also show that the interplay of neutrino self-coupling and matter fluctuation could cause a significant increase in the νe survival probability at very low energy. © 2011 American Physical Society.