Nucleon effective mass in hot dense matter

Nucleon effective masses are studied in the framework of the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock many-body approach at finite temperature. Self-consistent calculations using the Argonne V-18 interaction including a microscopic three-body force are reported for varying temperature and proton fraction up to several times the nuclear saturation density. Our calculations are based on the exact treatment of the center-of-mass momentum instead of the average-momentum approximation employed in previous works. We discuss in detail the effects of the temperature together with those of the three-body force, the density, and the isospin asymmetry. We also provide an analytical fit of the effective mass taking these dependencies into account. The temperature effects on the cooling of neutron stars are briefly discussed based on the results for beta-stable matter.