[Submitted on 17 Jan 2023]
The mass of charged pions in neutron star matter
Bryce Fore · Norbert Kaiser · Sanjay Reddy · Neill C. Warrington
We examine the behavior of charged pions in neutron-rich matter using heavy-baryon chiral perturbation theory. This study is motivated by the prospect that pions, or pion-like excitations, may be relevant in neutron-rich matter encountered in core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers. We find, as previously expected, that the mass increases with density and precludes s-wave condensation at , where is the nuclear saturation density, and the mass of the mode decreases with density. The uncertainty in these predictions increases rapidly for because low energy constants associated with the two-pion-two-nucleon operators in chiral perturbation theory are poorly constrained. We find that these uncertainties are especially large in symmetric nuclear matter and should be included in the analysis of pion-nucleus interactions at low energy and pionic atoms. In neutron-rich matter, accounting for the self-energy difference between neutrons and protons related to the nuclear symmetry energy has several effects. It alters the power counting of certain higher-order contributions to the pion self-energy. Previously unimportant but attractive diagrams are enhanced and result in a modest reduction of the pion masses. Furthermore, in the low-wavelength limit, a collective mode with the quantum numbers of the appears.
- Comments:
- 16 pages, 6 figures, 1 appendix
- Subjects:
- Nuclear Theory (nucl-th); High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE); High Energy Physics — Phenomenology (hep-ph)
- arXiv:
- 2301.07226 [pdf]