Neutrino Oscillations: a source of Goldstone fields and consequences for Supernovae∗

It is shown that true Nambu-Goldstone (NG) bosons develop coherent fields whenever the associated charges of the matter particles are not conserved in a macroscopic scale. The sources of the NG fields are the time rates of quantum number violation. If the lepton numbers are spontaneously broken at a scale below 1 TeV, the neutrino oscillation processes generate classic NG fields that are strong enough in Supernovae to modify the neutrino flavor dynamics. The oscillation patterns may change in the periods of largest ν fluxes. Two examples are given: 1. the back reaction of a NG field improves the adiabaticity of the νe resonant conversion; 2. ν̄e ↔ ν̄μ oscillations may occur even if νe is the lightest of the neutrinos. ∗Talk given at the International Symposium on Lepton and Baryon Number Violation, Trento, Italy, 1998