Thermal Evolution of Neutron Stars as a Probe of Physics beyond the Standard Model
Keisuke Yanagi
备注：
Dissertation submitted to Department of Physics, University of Tokyo (Dec. 2019). 117 pages. Based on arXiv:1806.07151, arXiv:1904.04667 and arXiv:1905.02991. The code used in chapter 4 and 5 is available at https://github.com/yng87/NSHeat.jl
Thermal evolution of neutron stars (NSs) is studied as a probe of physics beyond the standard model. We first review the standard cooling theory of NSs in detail, with an emphasis on the roles of nucleon superfluidity. Then we discuss non-standard evolution with axion and dark matter (DM); axion production enhances the cooling while DM accretion leads to heating of NSs. To evaluate the effect of DM heating, we need to compare it to the rotochemical heating, which is caused by the out-of-equilibrium beta processes in a NS. In the dissertation, we also investigate the rotochemical heating in the presence of both neutron and proton superfluidity.
We discuss the issue on dark matter capture by neutron stars, in particular the process of dark matter thermalization, by which the scattering cross section and the mass of dark matter can be constrained. At first, we evaluate the thermalization time of self-interacting dark matter and find the effect of the self-interaction is small compared with that of the interaction with nucleons. Then we generalize the thermalization time by introducing a set of new parameters. We show how the cross section is affected by those new parameters. It turns out that the cross section gets very sensitive to an…
A promising probe to unmask particle dark matter is to observe its effect on neutron stars, the prospects of which depend critically on whether captured dark matter thermalizes in a timely manner with the stellar core via repeated scattering with the Fermi-degenerate medium. In this work we estimate the timescales for thermalization for multiple scenarios. These include: (a) spin-0 and spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ dark matter, (b) scattering on non-relativistic neutron and relativistic electron targets accounting for the respective kinematics, (c) interactions via a range of Lorentz-invariant structures…
Quantum interferometric probe of neutron--hidden neutron oscillations
Università di Salerno（萨莱诺大学）；INFN – Gruppo Collegato di Salerno（意大利国家核物理研究所萨莱诺协作组）；University of Camerino（卡梅里诺大学）；Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑工业大学）
The thermal evolution of properties of neutron rich asymmetric nuclear matter such as entropy density, internal energy density, free energy density and pressure are studied in the non-relativistic mean field theory using finite range effective interactions. In this framework the thermal evolution of nuclear matter properties is directly connected to the neutron and proton effective mass properties. Depending on the magnitude of neutron-proton effective mass splittings, two distinct behaviours in the thermal evolution of nuclear matter properties are noticed.
We present our calculations of the thermal neutrino radiation that accompanies the explosion of a minimum-mass neutron star. In this case, the neutrino luminosity is lower than the luminosity during a supernova explosion approximately by five orders of magnitude, while the energy carried away by neutrinos is low compared to the explosion energy. We also show that the energy losses through neutrinos do not hinder the envelope heating and the cumulation of the shock during its breakout and the acceleration of the outer part of the envelope to ultrarelativistic speeds.
The fundamental constituent of matter at high temperature and density has intrigued physicists for quite some time. Recent results from heavy-ion colliders have enriched the Quantum Chromodynamics phase diagram at high temperatures and low baryon density. However, the phase at low temperatures and finite (mostly intermediate) baryon density remain unexplored. Theoretical Quantum Chromodynamics calculation predicts phase transition from hadronic matter to quark matter at such densities. Presently, the best laboratories available to probe such densities lie at the core of neutron stars. Recent r…
The experimental limit on the neutron electric dipole moment is used as a possible probe of new physics beyond the standard model. Within MSSM we use the current experimental limit on the neutron EDM and possible future improvement as a probe of high scale SUSY. Quantitative analyses show that scalar masses as large as a PeV and larger could be probed in improved experiment far above the scales accessible at future colliders. We also discuss the neutron EDM as a probe of new physics models beyond MSSM. Specifically we consider an MSSM extension with a particle content including a vectorlike mu…
We compute the contribution of phonons to the thermal conductivity in the core of superfluid neutron stars. We use effective field theory techniques to extract the phonon scattering rates, written as a function of the equation of state of the system. We also calculate the phonon dispersion law beyond linear order, which depends on the gap of superfluid neutron matter. With all these ingredients, we solve the Boltzmann equation numerically using a variational approach. We find that the thermal conductivity $κ$ is dominated by combined small and large angle binary collisions. As in the color-fla…
We use the method of thermal QCD sum rules to investigate the effects of temperature on the neutron electric dipole moment d_n induced by the vacuum \barθ-angle. Then, we analyze and discuss the thermal behaviour of the ratio {d_n \over \barθ} in connection with the restoration of the strong CP symmetry breaking.
A light scalar dark matter (DM) is allowed in a wide range of the mass and interaction types. We show that the light scalar DM may be probed in a new way from final years of neutron-star (NS) binary inspirals. If the DM interacts with the neutron, its long wave coherence in the background can induce the time-oscillating mass shift, to which the binary inspiral is inherently sensitive. But the sensitivity is found to be significantly enhanced by a large number of gravitational-wave (GW) cycles during year-long highest-frequency measurements in the broadband $f \simeq 0.01-1000$ Hz. The future b…
We examine whether the accretion of dark matter onto neutron stars could ever have any visible external effects. Captured dark matter which subsequently annihilates will heat the neutron stars, although it seems the effect will be too small to heat close neutron stars at an observable rate whilst those at the galactic centre are obscured by dust. Non-annihilating dark matter would accumulate at the centre of the neutron star. In a very dense region of dark matter such as that which may be found at the centre of the galaxy, a neutron star might accrete enough to cause it to collapse within a pe…
The impact of strong magnetic fields B>10e13 G on the thermal evolution of neutron stars is investigated, including crustal heating by magnetic field decay. For this purpose, we perform 2D cooling simulations with anisotropic thermal conductivity considering all relevant neutrino emission processes for realistic neutron stars. The standard cooling models of neutron stars are called into question by showing that the magnetic field has relevant (and in many cases dominant) effects on the thermal evolution. The presence of the magnetic field significantly affects the thermal surface distribution …
The behaviour of the broken CP symmetry at finite temperature is examined. This is achieved through the investigation of the neutron electric dipole moment $d_n$ induced by $θ$-term. By using thermal QCD sum rules, we find that below the critical temperature, the ratio $\mid {d_n \over \barθ}\mid$ slightly decreases but survives at temperature effects. This evolution implies that CP remains broken at finite temperature as required by Baryogenesis \cite{Chabab}.
This paper investigates a new experimental framework to test the braneworld hypothesis. Recent theoretical results have shown the possibility of matter exchange between branes under the influence of suitable magnetic vector potentials. It is shown that the required conditions might be achieved with present-day technology. The experiment uses a source of pulsed and coherent electromagnetic radiation and relies on the Hansch frequency comb technique well-known in ultrahigh-precision spectroscopy. A good matter candidate for testing the hypothesis is a polarized ultracold neutron gas for which th…
We study how many-body effects alter the dark matter (DM) thermalization time inside neutron stars. We find that Pauli blocking, kinematic constraints, and superfluidity and superconductivity in the neutron star significantly affect the DM thermalization time, in general lengthening it. This could change the final DM mass and DM-nucleon cross section constraints by considering black hole formation in neutron stars due to DM accretion. We consider the class of models in which DM is an asymmetric, complex scalar particle with a mass between 1 keV and 5 GeV which couples to regular matter via som…
Yoichiro Nambu put a great foot print in nuclear physics in the era of its fundamental developments including his pioneering insight into essential ingredients of repulsive core of nuclear force and its relation to the saturation of nuclear matter. The present review article focuses onto recent developments of the interaction models between colliding nuclei in terms of Brueckner's G-matrix theory staring from realistic nuclear forces and the saturation property of symmetric nuclear matter as well as neutron-star matter. A recently proposed unique scenario of extracting the saturation property …
We summarize the current status of baryon number violation in supersymmetry and provide prospects for going beyond the present reach by means of a new search for neutron-antineutron oscillations. The main motivation is the recently proposed neutron-antineutron oscillation experiment at the European Spallation Source in Lund, Sweden, which is projected to be able to improve the current bound on the transition probability in the quasi-free regime by three orders of magnitude. We consider various processes involving superpartners that give rise to neutron-antineutron oscillations and extract the …
Deep Inelastic Scattering (DIS) experiments at the planned Electron-Ion Collider will be affected by details of the hadron formation inside the nuclear volume. Besides semi-inclusive particle production experiments decays of the target nucleus via emission of neutrons provide an additional opportunity to probe this domain. This paper reports on the hybrid dynamical+statistical calculations of low-energy neutron production in muon- and virtual photon-induced collisions with nuclei. We confirm the conclusion that the E665 data on neutron production in $μ^-$ + Pb DIS at 470 GeV indicate a strong …
