Physics of neutrino flavor transformation through matter–neutrino resonances

Abstract In astrophysical environments such as core-collapse supernovae and neutron star–neutron star or neutron star–black hole mergers where dense neutrino media are present, matter–neutrino resonances (MNRs) can occur when the neutrino propagation potentials due to neutrino–electron and neutrino–neutrino forward scattering nearly cancel each other. We show that neutrino flavor transformation through MNRs can be explained by multiple adiabatic solutions similar to the Mikheyev–Smirnov–Wolfenstein mechanism. We find that for the normal neutrino mass hierarchy, neutrino flavor evolution through MNRs can be sensitive to the shape of neutrino spectra and the adiabaticity of the system, but such sensitivity is absent for the inverted hierarchy.