Neutrino pair emission from thermally excited nuclei in stellar collapse

Abstract

We examine the rate of neutrino-antineutrino pair emission by hot nuclei in collapsing stellar cores. The rates are calculated assuming that only allowed charge-neutral Gamow-Teller (GT$_0$) transitions contribute to the decay of thermally excited nuclear states. To obtain the GT$_0$ transition matrix elements, we employ the quasiparticle random phase approximation extended to finite temperatures within the thermo field dynamics formalism. The decay rates and the energy emission rates are calculated for the sample nuclei ${}^{56}$Fe and $^{82}$Ge at temperatures relevant to core collapse supernovae.