Abstract
We discuss the possible influence of gravity in the neutronization process which is particularly important as a cooling mechanism of neutron stars. Our approach is semiclassical in the sense that leptonic fields are quantized on a classical background spacetime, while neutrons and protons are treated as excited and unexcited nucleon states, respectively. We expect gravity to have some influence wherever the energy content carried by the in state is barely above the neutron mass. In this case the emitted neutrinos would be soft enough to have a wavelength of the same order as the space curvature radius.
- Received 10 June 1999
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.61.127303
©2000 American Physical Society