Neutron stars and the fermionic Casimir effect

Abstract

The inner crust of neutron stars consists of nuclei of various shapes immersed in a neutron gas and stabilized by the Coulomb interaction in the form of a crystal lattice. The scattering of neutrons on nuclear inhomegeneities leads to the quantum correction to the total energy of the system. This correction resembles the Casimir energy and turns out to have a large influence on the structure of the crust.

6 pages, 1 figure, presented at the Fifth Workshop on Quantum Field Theory under the Influence of External Conditions, Leipzig, Germany, September 10-15, 2001, to appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys. A

References in corpus (4)

• The `Friction' of Vacuum, and other Fluctuation-Induced Forces
• Inner edge of neutron-star crust with SLy effective nucleon-nucleon interactions
• Quantum corrections to the ground state energy of inhomogeneous neutron matter
• Casimir Interaction among Objects Immersed in a Fermionic Environment

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Entrainment coefficient and effective mass for conduction neutrons in neutron star crust: simple microscopic models
• Exotic nuclear phases in the inner crust of neutron stars in the light of Skyrme-Hartree-Fock theory
• Properties of a quantum vortex in neutron matter
• In-medium ion mass renormalization and lattice vibrations in the neutron star crust
• Stochastic Dynamics and Bound States of Heavy Impurities in a Fermi Bath