Field Theory for Zero Sound and Ion Acoustic Wave in Astrophysical Matter

Abstract

We set up a field theory model to describe the longitudinal low energy modes in high density matter present in white dwarf stars. At the relevant scales, ions -- the nuclei of oxygen, carbon and helium -- are treated as heavy point-like spin-0 charged particles in an effective field theory approach, while the electron dynamics is described by the Dirac Lagrangian at the one-loop level. We show that there always exists a longitudinal gapless mode in the system irrespective whether the ions are in a plasma, crystal, or quantum liquid state. For certain values of the parameters, the gapless mode can be interpreted as a zero sound mode and, for other values, as an ion acoustic wave; we show that the zero sound and ion acoustic wave are complementary to each other. We discuss possible physical consequences of these modes for properties of white dwarfs.

12 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (7)

• Effective Lagrangian and Quantum Screening in Charged Condensate
• Electrodynamics at non-zero temperature, chemical potential, and Bose condensate
• Effective Field Theory for Quantum Liquid in Dwarf Stars
• Field Theory for a Deuteron Quantum Liquid
• Screening effects in plasma with charged Bose condensate
• Thermodynamics of nuclear condensates and phase transitions in white dwarfs
• Nuclear condensate and helium white dwarfs