Related papers: The Neutron Star Crust: Nuclear Physics Input
The past years have witnessed tremendous progress in understanding the properties of neutron stars and of the dense matter in their cores, made possible by electromagnetic observations of neutron stars and the detection of gravitational…
Using the momentum-dependent MDI effective interaction for nucleons, we have studied the transition density and pressure at the boundary between the inner crust and liquid core of hot neutron stars. We find that their values are larger in…
In this chapter we discuss some possible physical pictures that describe the constitution of the inner crust of compact objects. Different relativistic models both with constant couplings and density dependent ones are used. We calculate…
The complex nature of the nuclear forces generates a broad range and diversity of observational phenomena. Heavy nuclei, though orders of magnitude less massive than neutron stars, are governed by the same underlying physics, which is…
We show that, in order to determine the equation of state of the inner crust of an accreting neutron star, one should minimize not the Gibbs free energy, as it is generally assumed in the literature, but a different thermodynamic potential…
Few unified equations of state for neutron star matter where core and crust are described using the same nuclear model are available. However the use of non-unified equations of state with a simplified matching between the crust and the…
Transitions of nuclear compositions in the crust of a neutron star induced by stellar spin-down are evaluated at zero temperature. We construct a compressible liquid-drop model for the energy of nuclei immersed in a neutron gas, including…
The physics of neutron star crusts is vast, involving many different research fields, from nuclear and condensed matter physics to general relativity. This review summarizes the progress, which has been achieved over the last few years, in…
In this presentation I discuss two aspects of the neutron-matter equation of state. One relates to the symmetry energy of nuclear matter and empirical constraints on its slope parameter at saturation density. The second deals with spatially…
Neutron stars are some of the densest manifestations of massive objects in the universe. They are ideal astrophysical laboratories for testing theories of dense matter physics and provide connections among nuclear physics, particle physics…
Microscopic calculations of neutron matter based on nuclear interactions derived from chiral effective field theory, combined with the recent observation of a 1.97 +- 0.04 M_sun neutron star, constrain the equation of state of neutron-rich…
Infinite nuclear matter is a suitable laboratory to learn about nuclear forces in many-body systems. Modern theoretical predictions of neutron-rich matter are particularly timely in view of recent and planned measurements of observables…
The cell structure of clusters in the inner crust of a cold \beta-equilibrium neutron star is studied within a Thomas Fermi approach and compared with other approaches which include shell effects. Relativistic nuclear models are considered.…
A set of microscopic, covariant density-functional, and non-relativistic Skyrme-type equations of state is employed to study the structure of purely nucleonic neutron stars at finite temperature. After examining the agreement with presently…
The nuclear symmetry energy is intimately connected with nuclear astrophysics. This contribution focuses on the estimation of the symmetry energy from experiment and how it is related to the structure of neutron stars. The most important…
The poorly known crustal equation of state plays a critical role in many observational phenomena associated with a neutron star. Using semi-classical Monte Carlo simulations, we explore the possible configurations of the inner edge of the…
In the standard picture of the crust of a neutron star, matter there is simple: a body-centered-cubic (bcc) lattice of nuclei immersed in an essentially uniform electron gas. We show that at densities above that for neutron drip…
Using the nuclear symmetry energy that has been recently constrained by the isospin diffusion data in intermediate-energy heavy ion collisions, we have studied the transition density and pressure at the inner edge of neutron star crusts,…
The nuclear symmetry energy is a fundamental quantity important for studying the structure of systems as diverse as the atomic nucleus and the neutron star. Considerable efforts are being made to experimentally extract the symmetry energy…
The functional form of the nuclear symmetry energy in the whole range of densities relevant for the neutron stars is still unknown. Discrepancies concern both the low as well as the high density behaviour of this function. By use of Bezier…