Impacts of Strongly Magnetized Degenerate Plasma on the Electron-capture Rates

¹ National Astronomical Observatoryof Japan, 2-21-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan
² Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
³ School of Physics, International Research Center for Big-Bang Cosmology and Element Genesis, Beihang University, 37, Xueyuan Rd., Haidian-qu, Beijing 100083 China

^* e-mail: yudong.luo@nao.ac.jp
^** e-mail: kusakabe@buaa.edu.cn
^*** e-mail: kajino@buaa.edu.cn

Published online: 24 February 2022

Abstract

The strongly magnetized degenerate astrophysical plasma is investigated.Arelativistic Hartree self-consistent field method is applied to calculate the screening potential. A profile froma15M_⊙ core collapsing supernova (SN) progenitor is applied to evaluate the electron-capture rates of ⁵⁴Fe. It is found that the screening potential at high field is enhanced compared with the previous study. If the field is high enough and only the lowest Landau level is allowed, two orders of magnitude reduction of the capture rates are found in the high-density region. Such deviations of the electron capture rates are essential since the rates determine the neutron richness of the progenitor model as well as the iron core mass, which are crucial for MHD-Jet SNe explosion calculation.