Gap-bridging enhancement of modified Urca processes in nuclear matter

In nuclear matter at neutron-star densities and temperatures, Cooper pairing leads to the formation of a gap in the nucleon excitation spectra resulting in exponentially strong Boltzmann suppression of many transport coefficients. Previous calculations have shown evidence that density oscillations o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2017-01
Main Authors: Alford, Mark G, Pangeni, Kamal
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bridging
Excitation spectra
Mathematical analysis
Neutrinos
Neutrons
Nuclear matter
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Summary:In nuclear matter at neutron-star densities and temperatures, Cooper pairing leads to the formation of a gap in the nucleon excitation spectra resulting in exponentially strong Boltzmann suppression of many transport coefficients. Previous calculations have shown evidence that density oscillations of sufficiently large amplitude can overcome this suppression for flavor-changing \(\beta\) processes, via the mechanism of "gap bridging". We address the simplifications made in that initial work, and show that gap bridging can counteract Boltzmann suppression of neutrino emissivity for the realistic case of modified Urca processes in matter with \(^3P_2\) neutron pairing.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1610.08617