English

Neutron Star Crust in Strong Magnetic Fields

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2015-05-20 v2

Abstract

We discuss the effects of strong magnetic fields through Landau quantization of electrons on the structure and stability of nuclei in neutron star crust. In strong magnetic fields, this leads to the enhancement of the electron number density with respect to the zero field case. We obtain the sequence of equilibrium nuclei of the outer crust in the presence of strong magnetic fields adopting most recent versions of the experimental and theoretical nuclear mass tables. For B1016B\sim 10^{16}G, it is found that some new nuclei appear in the sequence and some nuclei disappear from the sequence compared with the zero field case. Further we investigate the stability of nuclei in the inner crust in the presence of strong magnetic fields using the Thomas-Fermi model. The coexistence of two phases of nuclear matter - liquid and gas, is considered in this case. The proton number density is significantly enhanced in strong magnetic fields B1017B\sim 10^{17}G through the charge neutrality. We find nuclei with larger mass number in the presence of strong magnetic fields than those of the zero field. These results might have important implications for the transport properties of the crust in magnetars.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1012.5973,
  title  = {Neutron Star Crust in Strong Magnetic Fields},
  author = {Rana Nandi and Debades Bandyopadhyay},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1012.5973},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

6 pages including 3 figures; based on the talk presented at INPC2010, Vancouver; Submitted to the Proceedings of the conference in J. Phys. Conf. Ser

R2 v1 2026-06-21T17:05:18.416Z