Towards a self-consistent description of neutrino reactions in compact stars: challenges and achievementsONLINE ONLY

Neutrinos are created, scattered, absorbed by hot and dense matter in compact stars. The emission and absorption of neutrinos profoundly influence the chemical equilibrium conditions, the static (e.g. the proton fraction distribution) and the dynamic (e.g. the bulk viscosity) properties of compact stars. The scattering, emission and absorption of neutrinos jointly determine the location of neutrino sphere, the neutrino spectra, and may also influence the neutrino flavor oscillation due to collisional instability.

However, the calculations of these neutrino reaction rates remain challenging because they are influenced by the composition, the dispersion relationship and the interactions of the hot and dense hadronic matter in compact stars, which are still puzzling to the nuclear astrophysicists nowadays. In this talk, I will discuss our recent works that aim to self-consistently describe the neutrino-nucleon absorption opacity, scattering opacity and nucleonic dense matter equations of state, by using state-of-the-art microscopic many-body theories and Bayesian inference. At the very end, I can briefly discuss the potential effects of many-body corrections of neutrino opacities on the binary neutron merger simulations.