Chiral effective field theory calculations of neutrino processes in dense matter

TL;DR

This paper uses chiral effective field theory to calculate neutrino interactions in dense nuclear matter, revealing that short-range forces significantly affect neutrino rates relevant for supernova simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a chiral effective field theory approach to compute neutrino processes in dense matter, improving upon the one-pion exchange approximation.

Findings

Short-range noncentral forces reduce neutrino rates.

Neutrino rates are well constrained by nuclear data at certain densities.

Collision processes and spin effects dominate energy transfer.

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.