No Arabic abstract
We investigated the structure of the low density regions of the inner crust of neutron stars using the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) model to predict the proton content $Z$ of the nuclear clusters and, together with the lattice spacing, the proton content of the crust as a function of the total baryonic density $rho_b$. The exploration of the energy surface in the $(Z,rho_b)$ configuration space and the search for the local minima require thousands of calculations. Each of them implies an HFB calculation in a box with a large number of particles, thus making the whole process very demanding. In this work, we apply a statistical model based on a Gaussian Process Emulator that makes the exploration of the energy surface ten times faster. We also present a novel treatment of the HFB equations that leads to an uncertainty on the total energy of $approx 4$ keV per particle. Such a high precision is necessary to distinguish neighbour configurations around the energy minima.
Using relativistic mean-field models, the formation of clusterized matter, as the one expected to exist in the inner crust of neutron stars, is determined under the effect of strong magnetic fields. As already predicted from a calculation of the unstable modes resulting from density fluctuations at subsaturation densities, we confirm in the present work that for magnetic field intensities of the order of $approx 5 times 10^{16}$ G to $5 times 10^{17}$ G, pasta phases may occur for densities well above the zero-field crust-core transition density. This confirms that the extension of the crust may be larger than expected. It is also verified that the equilibrium structure of the clusterized matter is very sensitive to the intensity of the magnetic fields. As a result, the decay of the magnetic field may give rise to internal stresses which may result on the yield and fracture of the inner crust lattice.
By means of Monte Carlo methods, we perform a full error analysis on the Duflo-Zucker mass model. In particular, we study the presence of correlations in the residuals to obtain a more realistic estimate of the error bars on the predicted binding energies. To further reduce the discrepancies between model prediction and experimental data we also apply a Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network. We show that the root mean square of the model further reduces of roughly 40%. We then use the resulting models to predict the composition of the outer crust of a non accreting neutron star. We provide a first estimate of the impact of error propagation on the resulting equation of state of the system.
We study the linear response of the inner crust of neutron stars within the Random Phase Approximation, employing a Skyrme-type interaction as effective interaction. We adopt the Wigner-Seitz approximation, and consider a single unit cell of the Coulomb lattice which constitutes the inner crust, with a nucleus at its center, surrounded by a sea of free neutrons. With the use of an appropriate operator, it is possible to analyze in detail the properties of the vibrations of the surface of the nucleus and their interaction with the modes of the sea of free neutrons, and to investigate the role of shell effects and of resonant states.
The 1S0 pairing gap associated with the inner crust of a neutron star is calculated, taking into account the coexistence of the nuclear lattice with the sea of free neutrons (finite size effects), as well as medium polarization effects associated with the exchange of density and spin fluctuations. Both effects are found to be important and to lead to an overall quenching of the pairing gap. This result, whose quantitative value is dependent on the effective interaction used to generate the single-particle levels, is a consequence of the balance between the attractive (repulsive) induced interaction arising from the exchange of density (spin) modes, balance which in turn is influenced by the presence of the protons and depends on the single-particle structure of the system.
In this review we discuss self-consistent methods to calculate the global structure of strongly magnetised neutron stars within the general-relativistic framework. We outline why solutions in spherical symmetry cannot be applied to strongly magnetised compact stars, and elaborate on a consistent formalism to compute rotating magnetised neutron star models. We also discuss an application of the above full numerical solution for studying the influence of strong magnetic fields on the radius and crust thickness of magnetars. The above technique is also applied to construct a universal magnetic field profile inside the neutron star, that may be useful for studies in nuclear physics. The methodology developed here is particularly useful to interpret multi-messenger astrophysical data of strongly magnetised neutron stars.