Weak response of neutron matter at low momentum transfer

TL;DR

This paper investigates how interactions in neutron matter affect its weak response at low momentum transfer, revealing a significant increase in neutrino mean free path in cold neutron matter and analyzing temperature and energy dependencies.

Contribution

It introduces a consistent approach using Landau parameters from correlated basis functions to study neutron matter's weak response, extendable to finite temperatures.

Findings

Interactions significantly enhance neutrino mean free path in cold neutron matter

The approach provides a unified description of interaction effects

Temperature and neutrino energy influence the mean free path

Abstract

The Landau parameters obtained from the matrix elements of an effective interaction recently derived within the formalism of correlated basis functions have been used to carry out a study of the weak response of neutron matter in the region of low momentum transfer. The proposed approach allows for a consistent description of different interaction effects and can be extended to describe matter at non vanishing temperature. The results show that interactions lead to a sizable enhancement of the neutrino mean free path in cold neutron matter. The dependence of the mean free path on temperature and neutrino energy is also analyzed.