Gap-bridging enhancement of modified Urca processes in nuclear matter

Abstract

In nuclear matter at neutron-star densities and temperatures, Cooper pairing leads to the formation of a gap in the nucleon excitation spectra resulting in exponentially strong Boltzmann suppression of many transport coefficients. Previous calculations have shown evidence that density oscillations of sufficiently large amplitude can overcome this suppression for flavor-changing $\beta$ processes, via the mechanism of "gap bridging". We address the simplifications made in that initial work, and show that gap bridging can counteract Boltzmann suppression of neutrino emissivity for the realistic case of modified Urca processes in matter with $^3P_2$ neutron pairing.