Neutrino and axion emissivities of neutron stars from nucleon-nucleon scattering data

Abstract

Neutrino and axion production in neutron stars occurs mainly as bremsstrahlung from nucleon-nucleon (NN) scattering. The energy radiated via neutrinos or axions is typically very small compared to other scales in the two-nucleon system. The rate of emission of such "soft" radiation is directly related to the on-shell NN amplitude, and thereby to the NN experimental data. This facilitates the model-independent calculation of the neutrino and axion radiation rates which is presented here. We find that the resultant rates are a factor of four below earlier estimates based on a one-pion-exchange NN amplitude.

Comments: 5 pages, 2 figures, revtex, uses epsfig.sty. Revised version has minor modifications to the text and references, as well as some changes to the numerical results. The conclusions are unchanged