11.4 Photoneutrino emission
This process differs from the plasmon decay described in Section 11.3, by the participation of an
electron,
The process was proposed by Ritus [347, 348] and Chiu & Stabler [99]; the most recent formulae for
were derived by Itoh et al. [215, 216, 217]. Formula (263) implies that if
then
. Therefore,
is exponentially suppressed with decreasing temperature or increasing
density. Additional damping of
results from electron degeneracy. However, if electrons are
nondegenerate,
can be stronger than
.