Eur. Phys. J. C (2010) 67: 213-227
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-010-1291-9

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

TeV-scale bileptons, see-saw type II and lepton flavor violation in core-collapse supernova

¹ Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, B. Cheremushkinskaya 25, 117218, Moscow, Russia
² IPMU, University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, 277-8568, Japan

^* e-mail: lychkovskiy@itep.ru

Received: 7 January 2010
Published online: 31 March 2010

Abstract

Electrons and electron neutrinos in the inner core of the core-collapse supernova are highly degenerate and therefore numerous during a few seconds of explosion. In contrast, leptons of other flavors are non-degenerate and therefore relatively scarce. This is due to lepton flavor conservation. If this conservation law is broken by some non-standard interactions, ν _e are converted to ν _μ , ν _τ , and e are converted to μ. This affects the supernova dynamics and the supernova neutrino signal. We consider lepton flavor violating interactions mediated by scalar bileptons, i.e. heavy scalars with lepton number 2. It is shown that in case of TeV-mass bileptons the electron Fermi gas is equilibrated with non-electron species inside the inner supernova core at a time scale ∼(1–100) ms. In particular, a scalar triplet which generates neutrino masses through the see-saw type II mechanism is considered. It is found that the supernova core is sensitive to yet unprobed values of masses and couplings of the triplet.