A novel cooling mechanism is proposed for neutron stars, based on the recent development in the studies of the QCD phase diagram. A possible appearance of the inhomogeneous chiral phase makes the quark beta decay without gluonic interaction. An estimate of the neutrino emissivity shows the order of ${10}^{24–26}(T/{10}^9{)}^6(\mathrm{erg}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-3}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1})$ near the phase boundaries, whose efficiency is comparable with the usual quark cooling or pion cooling, but it works only in the limited density region. These features may give another cooling scenario of neutron stars.

• Received 8 March 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.89.103005