Abstract
Calculations of the rates of the cooling reactions and are presented; the rates of the closely related muon-producing reactions and the four inverse processes are also given. Several different arguments are used to obtain estimates of the relavant matrix elements. The nucleons are assumed to form a normal Fermi fluid with a continuous excitation spectrum. The calculated cooling rates indicate that a neutron star containing quasifree pions would cool within a few days to a temperature so low that the star would be unobservable. The surface of a star that does not contain quasifree pions would cool to °K in a few months and would reach 4× °K in about 100 years. The calculated cooling rates strongly indicate that the discrete x-ray sources located in the direction of the galactic center are not neutron stars.
- Received 19 July 1965
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.140.B1452
©1965 American Physical Society