Nuclear pasta in hot dense matter and its implications for neutrino scattering
- Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States). Inst. for Nuclear Theory; Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States). Inst. for Nuclear Theory; Univ. de Lyon, Villeurbanne (France); Univ. Claude Bernard Lyon, Villeurbanne (France). Inst. de Physique Nucleaire de Lyon
- Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI (United States). National Superconducting Lab. and Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
- Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States). Inst. for Nuclear Theory
The abundance of large clusters of nucleons in neutron-rich matter at subnuclear density is found to be greatly reduced by finite-temperature effects when matter is close to β equilibrium, compared to the case where the electron fraction is fixed at Ye > 0.1 , as often considered in the literature. Large nuclei and exotic nonspherical nuclear configurations called pasta, favored in the vicinity of the transition to uniform matter at T = 0 , dissolve at a relatively low temperature Tu as protons leak out of nuclei and pasta. For matter at β-equilibrium with a negligible neutrino chemical potential we find that T$$β\atop{u}$$ ≃ 4 ± 1 MeV for realistic equations of state. This is lower than the maximum temperature T$$β\atop{max}$$ ≃ 9 ± 1 MeV at which nuclei can coexist with a gas of nucleons and can be explained by a change in the nature of the transition to uniform matter called retrograde condensation. An important new finding is that coherent neutrino scattering from nuclei and pasta makes a modest contribution to the opacity under the conditions encountered in supernovas and neutron star mergers. This is because large nuclear clusters dissolve at most relevant temperatures, and at lower temperatures, when clusters are present, Coulomb correlations between them suppress coherent neutrino scattering off individual clusters. Lastly, implications for neutrino signals from galactic supernovas are briefly discussed.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC). Nuclear Physics (NP) (SC-26); USDOE
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396; FG02-00ER41132; SC0017955
- OSTI ID:
- 1438361
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1433276
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-17-29841; PRVCAN; TRN: US1900421
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review C, Vol. 97, Issue 4; ISSN 2469-9985
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
Survey of nuclear pasta in the intermediate-density regime: Shapes and energies
|
journal | October 2019 |
Dense matter equation of state for neutron star mergers
|
journal | January 2019 |
| Domains and defects in nuclear "pasta" | text | January 2018 |
| Damping of density oscillations in neutrino-transparent nuclear matter | text | January 2019 |
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