Neutrino Mass Spectrum from Gravitational Waves Generated by Double Neutrino Spin-Flip in Supernovae

The supernova (SN) neutronization phase produces mainly electron (νe) neutrinos, the oscillations of which must take place within a few mean free paths of their resonance surface located nearby their neutrinosphere. The latest research on the SN dynamics suggests that a significant part of these νe can convert into right-handed neutrinos by virtue of the interaction of the electrons and the protons flowing with the SN outgoing plasma, whenever the Dirac neutrino magnetic moment is of strength μν < 10−11μB, with μB being the Bohr magneton. In the SN envelope, some of these neutrinos can flip back to the left-handed flavors due to the interaction of the neutrino magnetic moment with the magnetic field in the SN expanding plasma (see the work by Kuznetsov & Mikheev; Kuznetsov, Mikheev, & Okrugin; Akhmedov & Khlopov; Itoh & Tsuneto; and Itoh et al.), a region where the field strength is currently accepted to be Bgsim 1013 G. This type of ν oscillation was shown to generate powerful gravitational wave (GW) bursts (see the work by Mosquera Cuesta; Mosquera Cuesta & Fiuza; and Loveridge). If such a double spin-flip mechanism does run into action inside the SN core, then the release of both the oscillation-produced νμ and ντ particles and the GW pulse generated by the coherent ν spin-flips provides a unique emission offset Δ TemiGW ↔ ν = 0 for measuring the ν travel time to Earth. As massive ν particles get noticeably delayed on their journey to Earth with respect to the Einstein GW they generated during the reconversion transient, then the accurate measurement of this time-of-flight delay by SNEWS + LIGO, VIRGO, BBO, DECIGO, etc., might readily assess the absolute ν mass spectrum