Spin-down of neutron stars by neutrino emission

TL;DR

This paper investigates how neutrino emissions during a neutron star's early formation phase can cause spin-down, but finds the effect is minimal, removing less than 1% of angular momentum in the first tens of seconds.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis showing that neutrino-induced spin-down is less significant than previously thought, limited to early seconds of neutron star formation.

Findings

Neutrino collisions can slow neutron star rotation in initial seconds.

The spin-down effect accounts for less than 1% of angular momentum loss.

Previous estimates overestimated the impact of neutrino emissions.

Abstract

We study the spin-down of a neutron star during its early stages due to the neutrino emission. The mechanism we consider is the subsequent collisions of the produced neutrinos with the outer shells of the star. We find that this mechanism can indeed slow down the star rotation but only in the first tens of seconds of the core formation, which is when the appropriate conditions of flux and collision rate are met. We find that this mechanism can extract less than 1 % of the star angular momentum, a result which is much less than previously estimated by other authors.