Polaronic Proton and Diproton Clustering in Neutron-Rich Matter

Abstract

We show that strong spin-triplet neutron-proton interaction causes polaronic protons to occur in neutron matter at subnuclear densities and nonzero temperature. As the neutron density increases, proton spectra exhibit a smooth crossover from a bare impurity to a repulsive polaron branch; this branch coexists with an attractive polaron branch. With the neutron density increased further, the attractive polarons become stable with respect to deuteron formation. For two adjacent protons, we find that the polaron effects and the neutron-mediated attraction are sufficient to induce a bound diproton, which leads possibly to diproton formation in the surface region of neutron-rich nuclei in laboratories as well as in neutron stars.

6 pages, 4 figures (8 pages, 6 figures in the supplement)

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Interactions mediated by atoms, photons, electrons, and excitons
• Short-Range Correlations and Urca Process in Neutron Stars
• Polaronic Proton and Diproton Clustering in Neutron-Rich Matter
• Quartet correlations near the surface of $N=Z$ nuclei
• Polaronic neutron in dilute alpha matter: A $p$-wave Bose polaron
• Polaronic dressing of bound states
• Extending the Feynman variational principle and analytical methods to lattice polarons
• Ab initio study of the neutron and Fermi polarons on the lattice