Nuclear pasta in hot dense matter and its implications for neutrino scattering

Abstract

We find that the abundance of large clusters of nucleons in neutron-rich matter at sub-nuclear density is greatly reduced by finite temperature effects when matter is close to beta-equilibrium. Large nuclei and exotic non-spherical nuclear configurations called pasta, favored in the vicinity of the transition to uniform matter at $T=0$, dissolve at relatively low temperature. For matter close to beta-equilibrium we find that the pasta melting temperature is $T_m^\beta\simeq 4\pm 1$~MeV for realistic equations of state. The mechanism for pasta dissolution is discussed, and in general $T_m^\beta$ is shown to be sensitive to the proton fraction. We find that coherent neutrino scattering from nuclei and pasta makes a modest contribution to the opacity under the conditions encountered in supernovae and neutron star mergers. Implications for neutrino signals from galactic supernovae are briefly discussed.