Nucleon-nucleon interaction and the neutrino surface of neutron star mergers

Abstract

Neutrinos act as an important cooling mechanism in an array of explosive astrophysical events. Modeling of their fluxes and spectra is key for the interpretation of their detection and the understanding of the synthesis of heavy elements. The neutrino surface is key in the modeling of neutrino spectra. In previous work, the points of last neutrino scattering were found assuming no interaction between nucleons. In this work we incorporate this interaction using a few different models and observe differences in where the neutrinos decouple from the system.