Thermal Fluctuations in Nuclear Pasta

Abstract

Despite their astrophysical relevance, nuclear pasta phases are relatively unstudied at high temperatures. We present molecular dynamics simulations of symmetric nuclear matter with several topologies of `lasagna' at a range of temperatures to study the pasta-uniform transition. Using the Minkowski functionals we quantify trends in the occupied volume, surface area, mean breadth, and Euler characteristic. The amplitude of surface displacements of the pasta increase with temperature which produce short lived topological defects such as holes and filaments near melting, resulting in power laws for increasing surface curvature with temperature. We calculate the static structure factor and report the shear viscosity and thermal conductivity of pasta, finding that the shear viscosity is minimized at the melting temperature. These results may have implications for the thermoelastic properties of nuclear pasta and finite temperature corrections to the equation of state at pasta densities.

13 pages, 8 figures, PRC accepted

References in corpus (10)

• Disordered nuclear pasta, magnetic field decay, and crust cooling in neutron stars
• Warming Nuclear Pasta with Dark Matter: Kinetic and Annihilation Heating of Neutron Star Crusts
• Pasta Nucleosynthesis: Molecular dynamics simulations of nuclear statistical equilibrium
• Nuclear Waffles
• Elastic properties of phases with nonspherical nuclei in dense matter
• Nuclear Pasta Matter for Different Proton Fractions
• Transport properties of nuclear pasta phase with quantum molecular dynamics
• Curvature effect on nuclear pasta: Is it helpful for gyroid appearance?
• Nuclear pasta and supernova neutrinos at late times
• Dense Matter and Neutron Stars: Some Basic Notions

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Glassy quantum nuclear pasta in neutron star crusts
• The proto-neutron star inner crust in a multi-component plasma approach
• Anisotropic electron transport in the nuclear pasta phase
• Nuclear pasta structures at high temperatures
• Do short range correlations inhibit the appearance of the nuclear pasta?
• Characterization of the inner edge of the neutron star crust
• Light clusters as a possible source of crustal impurities: a quasi-particle approach
• Continuous gravitational waves from thermal mountains on accreting neutron stars: effect of the nuclear pasta phase