Neutrino-driven instability of ion acoustic waves in an ultra-relativistic degenerate plasma

The coupling between ion-acoustic waves (IAWs) and a neutrino beam undergoing flavor oscillations in a dense, relativistically degenerate plasma is analyzed. The neutrino-driven streaming instability of the IAWs is investigated with relevance to plasma conditions at the last stage of stellar evolution in a massive supernova progenitor. The influence of neutrino beam parameters such as the energy of the incident neutrino beam and eigen-frequency of the neutrino flavor oscillations on the instability growth rate is obtained numerically. It is observed that the neutrino flavor oscillations significantly affect the neutrino-driven instability of the IAWs. Our results also indicate that the time period for the onset of the streaming neutrino-driven instability is shorter than the typical time period of a core-collapse supernova explosion. The findings of this investigation may shed new light on the understanding of underlying physical mechanism responsible for the core-collapse supernova.