Strange Neutral Currents in Nuclei

Abstract

We examine the effects on the nuclear neutral current Gamow-Teller (GT) strength of a finite contribution from a polarized strange quark sea. We perform nuclear shell model calculations of the neutral current GT strength for a number of nuclei likely to be present during stellar core collapse. We compare the GT strength when a finite strange quark contribution is included to the strength without such a contribution. As an example, the process of neutral current nuclear de-excitation via $\nu {\overline{\nu}}$ pair production is examined for the two cases.