Bridging the gap by shaking superfluid matter

Abstract

In cold compact stars, Cooper pairing between fermions in dense matter leads to the formation of a gap in their excitation spectrum and typically exponentially suppresses transport properties. However, we show here that weak Urca reactions become strongly enhanced and approach their ungapped level when the star undergoes density oscillations of sufficiently large amplitude. We study both the neutrino emissivity and the bulk viscosity due to direct Urca processes in hadronic, hyperonic and quark matter and discuss different superfluid and superconducting pairing patterns.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Color superconductivity in dense quark matter
• Resonant Shattering of Neutron Star Crusts
• Large amplitude behavior of the bulk viscosity of dense matter
• Bulk viscosity of strange quark matter: Urca versus non-leptonic processes
• Temperature effects in pulsating superfluid neutron stars

Cited by in corpus (8)

• On the importance of viscous dissipation and heat conduction in binary neutron-star mergers
• Superfluidity in nuclear systems and neutron stars
• Reaction rates and transport in neutron stars
• Urca reactions during neutron star inspiral
• Phase conversion dissipation in multicomponent compact stars
• Velocity-dependent energy gaps and dynamics of superfluid neutron stars
• The entrainment matrix of a superfluid nucleon mixture at finite temperatures
• Gap-bridging enhancement of modified Urca processes in nuclear matter