Nuclear symmetry energy and core-crust transition in neutron stars: a critical study

Abstract

The slope of the nuclear symmetry energy at saturation density $L$ is pointed out as a crucial quantity to determine the mass and width of neutron-star crusts. This letter clarifies the relation between $L$ and the core-crust transition. We confirm that the transition density is soundly correlated with $L$ despite differences between models, and we propose a clear understanding of this correlation based on a generalised liquid drop model. Using a large number of nuclear models, we evaluate the dispersion affecting the correlation between the transition pressure $P_t$ and $L$. From a detailed analysis it is shown that this correlation is weak due to a cancellation between different terms. The correlation between the isovector coefficients $K_{\mathrm{sym}}$ and $L$ plays a crucial role in this discussion.

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Cited by in corpus (29)

• Implications of PREX-II on the equation of state of neutron-rich matter
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• Towards Understanding Astrophysical Effects of Nuclear Symmetry Energy
• Nuclear symmetry energy and its density slope at normal density extracted from global nucleon optical potentials
• Equation of state and thickness of the inner crust of neutron stars
• Pulsar Glitches: The Crust may be Enough
• Strong correlations of neutron star radii with the slopes of nuclear matter incompressibility and symmetry energy at saturation
• The Vlasov formalism for extended relativistic mean field models: the crust-core transition and the stellar matter equation of state
• Neutron skins and neutron stars
• Bayesian Inference of the Symmetry Energy and the Neutron Skin in ${}^{48}$Ca and ${}^{208}$Pb from CREX and PREX-2
• Constraints on the nuclear symmetry energy from asymmetric-matter calculations with chiral NN and 3N interactions
• Influence of the symmetry energy on nuclear pasta in neutron star crusts
• Effects of nuclear symmetry energy and equation of state on neutron star properties
• Empirical constraints on the high-density equation of state from multi-messenger observables
• Symmetry energy systematics and its high density behavior
• Unveiling the correlations of tidal deformability with the nuclear symmetry energy parameters
• Crust-core transition of a neutron star: effects of the symmetry energy and temperature under strong magnetic fields
• Unified neutron star equations of state calibrated to nuclear properties
• Structure of ultra-magnetised neutron stars
• Unified equations of state for cold non-accreting neutron stars with Brussels-Montreal functionals. IV. Role of the symmetry energy in pasta phases
• Stability of the $\beta$-equilibrated dense matter and core-crust transition in neutron stars
• Estimating magnetar radii with an empirical meta-model
• Neutron-skin values and matter and neutron radii determined from reaction cross sections of proton scattering on ${}^{12}$C, ${}^{40,48}$Ca, ${}^{58}$Ni, ${}^{208}$Pb
• Nuclear pasta and symmetry energy in the relativistic point-coupling model
• Influence of the nuclear symmetry energy slope on observables of compact stars with $\Delta$-admixed hypernuclear matter
• Strong magnetic fields and pasta phases revisited
• Strong magnetic fields: neutron stars with an extended inner crust
• Strong correlation of the neutron star core-crust transition density with the $\sigma$-meson mass via vacuum polarization
• The nuclear matter density functional under the nucleonic hypothesis