A new statistical method for the structure of the inner crust of neutron stars

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.

References in corpus (19)

• Shapiro delay measurement of a two solar mass neutron star
• A Massive Pulsar in a Compact Relativistic Binary
• Neutron Star Observations: Prognosis for Equation of State Constraints
• Further explorations of Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov mass formulas. XII: Stiffness and stability of neutron-star matter
• Nuclear symmetry energy probed by neutron skin thickness of nuclei
• Hyperon Puzzle: Hints from Quantum Monte Carlo Calculations
• Neutron conduction in the inner crust of a neutron star in the framework of the band theory of solids
• Inner crust of neutron stars with mass-fitted Skyrme functionals
• Equation of state and thickness of the inner crust of neutron stars
• Impact of the symmetry energy on the outer crust of non-accreting neutron stars
• Equation of state of superfluid neutron matter and the calculation of ${}^1{S}_0$ pairing gap
• Semi-classical equation of state and specific heats for neutron-star inner crust with proton shell corrections
• On the validity of the Wigner-Seitz approximation in neutron star crust
• Nuclear matter in the crust of neutron stars
• Neutron drip transition in accreting and nonaccreting neutron star crusts
• Cluster formation in compact stars: relativistic versus Skyrme models
• Error analysis of nuclear mass fits
• In-medium nuclear cluster energies within the Extended Thomas-Fermi approach
• Pairing properties and specific heat of the inner crust of a neutron star

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Systematic analysis of inner crust composition using the extended Thomas-Fermi approximation with pairing correlations
• Comparison between the Thomas-Fermi and Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov Methods in the Inner Crust of a Neutron Star: The Role of Pairing Correlations