Cooling Timescale for Protoneutron Stars and Properties of Nuclear Matter: Effective Mass and Symmetry Energy at High Densities

The cooling process of a protoneutron star (PNS) is investigated with focus on its sensitivity to properties of hot and dense matter. An equation of state, which includes the nucleon effective mass and nuclear symmetry energy at twice the saturation density as control parameters, is constructed for systematic studies. The numerical code utilized in this study follows a quasi-static evolution of a PNS solving the general-relativistic stellar structure with neutrino diffusion. The cooling timescale evaluated from the neutrino light curve is found to be longer for the models with larger effective masses and smaller symmetry energies at high densities. The present results are compared with those for other equations of state and it is found that they are consistent in terms of their dependences on the effective mass and neutron star radius.