To which densities is spin-polarized neutron matter a weakly interacting Fermi gas?

Abstract

We study the properties of spin-polarized neutron matter at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order in chiral effective field theory, including two-, three-, and four-neutron interactions. The energy of spin-polarized neutrons is remarkably close to a non-interacting system at least up to saturation density, where interaction effects provide less than 10% corrections. This shows that the physics of neutron matter is similar to a unitary gas well beyond the scattering-length regime. Implications for energy-density functionals and for a possible ferromagnetic transition in neutron stars are discussed. Our predictions can be tested with lattice QCD, and we present results for varying pion mass.

5 pages, 4 figures, minor changes, published version

References in corpus (13)

• Many-Body Physics with Ultracold Gases
• Neutron matter at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order in chiral effective field theory
• Constraints on neutron star radii based on chiral effective field theory interactions
• Subleading contributions to the chiral three-nucleon force I: long-range terms
• Nuclear Physics from Lattice QCD
• A new Skyrme interaction with improved spin-isospin properties
• Four-nucleon force using the method of unitary transformation
• Spin Polarized Asymmetric Nuclear Matter and Neutron Star Matter Within the Lowest Order Constrained Variational Method
• Spin polarized neutron matter within the Dirac-Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approach
• Chiral condensate in neutron matter
• The chiral quark condensate and pion decay constant in nuclear matter at next-to-leading order
• The neutron polaron as a constraint on nuclear density functionals
• The chiral condensate in neutron matter

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Roy-Steiner-equation analysis of pion-nucleon scattering
• Nucleon Effective Masses in Neutron-Rich Matter
• Three-Nucleon Forces: Implementation and Applications to Atomic Nuclei and Dense Matter
• Chiral EFT based nuclear forces: Achievements and challenges
• Microscopic calculations based on chiral two- and three-nucleon forces for proton- and ${}^4$He-nucleus scattering
• The isospin quartic term in the kinetic energy of neutron-rich nucleonic matter
• Relativistic Effects and Three-Nucleon Forces in Nuclear Matter and Nuclei
• Spin-polarized neutron matter, the maximum mass of neutron stars, and GW170817
• Spin-polarized neutron matter at different orders of chiral effective field theory
• Fermi polaron in low-density spin-polarized neutron matter
• Lee-Yang-inspired energy-density functional including contributions from $p$-wave scattering
• Relativistic self-energy decomposition of nuclear symmetry energy and equation of state of neutron matter within QCD sum rules
• Skyrme interaction to second order in nuclear matter
• Neutron matter within QCD sum rules