Flavor solitons in dense neutrino gases

Abstract: We consider a dense neutrino gas in the "fast-flavor limit" (vanishing neutrino masses). For the first time, we identify exact solutions of the nonlinear wave equation in the form of solitons. They can propagate with both sub- or superluminal speed, the latter not violating causality. The soliton with infinite speed is a homogeneous solution and coincides with the usual fast-flavor pendulum except that it swings only once instead of being periodic. The subluminal soliton in the static limit corresponds to a one-swing "spatial pendulum". A necessary condition for such solutions to exist is a ``crossed'' neutrino angle distribution. Based on the Nyquist criterion, we derive a new sufficient condition without solving the dispersion relation. The solitons are very fragile: they are as unstable as the homogeneous neutrino gas alone. Moreover, in the presence of matter, only the solution survives that is homogeneous in a frame comoving with the matter current. Generally, the matter effect cannot be eliminated by transformations in flavor space, but instead has a real physical impact.