Fast Neutrino Flavor Conversions Can Help and Hinder Neutrino-Driven Explosions

Ehring, Jakob; Abbar, Sajad; Janka, Hans-Thomas; Raffelt, Georg; Tamborra, Irene 2023 Physical Review Letters  Volume 131, Issue 6 article id.061401

We present the first simulations of core-collapse supernovae in axial symmetry with feedback from fast neutrino flavor conversion (FFC). Our schematic treatment of FFCs assumes instantaneous flavor equilibration under the constraint of lepton-number conservation individually for each flavor. Systematically varying the spatial domain where FFCs are assumed to occur, we find that they facilitate SN explosions in low-mass (9 - 12 M_⊙ ) progenitors that otherwise explode with longer time delays, whereas FFCs weaken the tendency to explode of higher-mass (around 20 M_⊙) progenitors.