Metastable pions in dense media
Abstract
We study the leptonic decay of charged pions in a compact star environment. Considering leptons as a degenerated Fermi system, pions are tightly constrained to decay into these particles because their Fermi levels are occupied. Thus, pion decay is only possible through thermal fluctuations. Under these circumstances, pion lifetime is larger and hence can be considered to reach a metastable state. We explore restrictions under which such a metastability is possible. We also study conditions under which pions and leptons already in chemical equilibrium can reach simultaneously the thermal equilibrium, and obtain the neutrino emissivity from metastable pions. Scenarios that favor this metastable state are protoneutron stars.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1610.05751,
title = {Metastable pions in dense media},
author = {Marcelo Loewe and Alfredo Raya and Cristian Villavicencio},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.05751},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
10 pages, 5 figures. Version to appear in Phys. Rev. D