Uncertainty Quantification for Neutrino Opacities in Core-Collapse Supernovae and Neutron Star Mergers

TL;DR

This paper investigates the uncertainties in neutrino mean free paths in dense astrophysical environments, analyzing how nuclear physics uncertainties affect neutrino interactions in supernovae and neutron star mergers.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of how nuclear equation of state parameters influence neutrino opacities, highlighting the role of residual interactions and correlations.

Findings

Residual interactions significantly impact neutrino opacity in spin channels.

Strong correlations exist between EoS parameters and neutrino mean free paths.

Uncertainties in nuclear physics lead to substantial variations in neutrino interaction rates.

Abstract

We perform an extensive study of the correlations between the neutrino-nucleon inverse mean free paths (IMFPs) and the underlying equation of states (EoSs). Strong interaction uncertainties in the neutrino mean free path are investigated in different density regimes. The nucleon effective mass, the nucleon chemical potentials, and the residual interactions in the medium play an important role in determining neutrino-nucleon interactions in a density-dependent manner. We study how the above quantities are constrained by an EoS consistent with (i) nuclear mass measurements, (ii) proton-proton scattering phase shifts, and (iii) neutron star observations. We then study the uncertainties of both the charged current and the neutral current neutrino-nucleon inverse mean free paths due to the variation of these quantities, using Hartree-Fock+random phase approximation method. Finally, we calculate the Pearson correlation coefficients between (i) the EoS-based quantities and the EoS-based quantities; (ii) the EoS-based quantities and the IMFPs; (iii) the IMFPs and the IMFPs. We find a strong impact of residual interactions on neutrino opacity in the spin and spin-isospin channels, which are not well constrained by current nuclear modelings.