English

Chiral effective field theory calculations of neutrino processes in dense matter

Nuclear Theory 2009-11-06 v2 Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We calculate neutrino processes involving two nucleons at subnuclear densities using chiral effective field theory. Shorter-range noncentral forces reduce the neutrino rates significantly compared with the one-pion exchange approximation currently used in supernova simulations. For densities rho < 10^{14} g cm^{-3}, we find that neutrino rates are well constrained by nuclear interactions and nucleon-nucleon scattering data. As an application, we calculate the mean-square energy transfer in scattering of a neutrino from nucleons and find that collision processes and spin-dependent mean-field effects dominate over the energy transfer due to nucleon recoil.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0812.0102,
  title  = {Chiral effective field theory calculations of neutrino processes in dense matter},
  author = {S. Bacca and K. Hally and C. J. Pethick and A. Schwenk},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0812.0102},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures; NORDITA-2008-57; minor changes and additions, added results for the energy transfer in neutrino scattering, to appear as Rapid. Comm. in Phys. Rev. C