A New Study of the Transition to Uniform Nuclear Matter in Neutron Stars and Supernovae.pdf

A New Study of the Transition to Uniform Nuclear Matter in Neutron Stars and Supernovae 1 W. G. Newton† † University of Oxford, Condensed Matter Dept., Clarendon Laboratory, Parks Rd., Oxford, OX1 3PU, U.K. 7 Abstract 0 A comprehensive microscopic study of the properties of bulk matter at den- 0 sities just below nuclear saturation ρs = 2.5 ∼ 1014 g cm−3 , zero and finite 2 temperature and high neutron fraction, is outlined, and preliminary results pre- g sented. Such matter is expected to exist in the inner crust of neutron stars and u A during the core collapse of massive stars with M 8M⊙ 3 2 1 Introduction ] h p Understanding the phase transition from inhomogeneous to uniform nuclear - matter is important in the study of a number of astrophysical phenomena. In o the region of density 0.05ρ ρ 0.16ρ , temperature 0 T 10MeV and r s s t proton fraction 0.01 yp 0.3, which is expected at the bottom of neutron s a star crusts and during core collapse supernovae, heavy nuclei immersed in a [ fluid of neutrons are expected to become distorted into a series of exotic struc- 1 tures known as ‘nuclear pasta’ [1] in order to minimize the sum of their surface v tension energy and Coulomb repulsion with adjacent