A realistic model of superfluidity in the neutron star inner crust

Abstract

A semi-microscopic self-consistent quantum approach developed recently to describe the inner crust structure of neutron stars within the Wigner-Seitz (WS) method with the explicit inclusion of neutron and proton pairing correlations is further developed. In this approach, the generalized energy functional is used which contains the anomalous term describing the pairing. It is constructed by matching the realistic phenomenological functional by Fayans et al. for describing the nuclear-type cluster in the center of the WS cell with the one calculated microscopically for neutron matter. Previously the anomalous part of the latter was calculated within the BCS approximation. In this work corrections to the BCS theory which are known from the many-body theory of pairing in neutron matter are included into the energy functional in an approximate way. These modifications have a sizable influence on the equilibrium configuration of the inner crust, i.e. on the proton charge Z and the radius R_c of the WS cell. The effects are quite significant in the region where the neutron pairing gap is larger.

24 pages, 14 figures; LaTeX, submitted to EPJA

References in corpus (8)

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• Low densities in nuclear and neutron matters and in the nuclear surface
• ${}^1{S}_0$ superfluid phase--transition in neutron matter with realistic nuclear potentials and modern many--body theories
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Cited by in corpus (27)

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• Neutron Stars and the Nuclear Equation of State
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• Phases of dense matter in compact stars
• Properties of the nuclear medium
• Low-energy collective excitations in the neutron star inner crust
• The neutron star inner crust and symmetry energy
• Nuclear matter in the crust of neutron stars
• Nuclear Equation of state for Compact Stars and Supernovae
• Symmetry energy: nuclear masses and neutron stars
• Pairing in exotic neutron rich nuclei around the drip line and in the crust of neutron stars
• The cluster structure of the inner crust of neutron stars in the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov approach
• Unified description of neutron superfluidity in the neutron-star crust with analogy to anisotropic multi-band BCS superconductors
• Densities and energies of nuclei in dilute matter
• Light clusters in warm stellar matter: explicit mass shifts and universal cluster-meson couplings
• Structure and composition of inner crust of neutron stars from Gogny interactions
• The proto-neutron star inner crust in the liquid phase
• Finite-size effects and collective vibrations in the inner crust of neutron stars
• Suppression of Superfluidity upon Overflow of Trapped Fermions. Quantal and Thomas-Fermi Studies
• Microscopic calculation of the pinning energy of a vortex in the inner crust of a neutron star
• Upper edge of the neutron star crust : the drip point and around
• Thomas-Fermi approximation to pairing in finite Fermi systems. The weak coupling regime
• Time-dependent nuclear energy-density functional theory toolkit for neutron star crust: Dynamics of a nucleus in a neutron superfluid
• Light clusters in the liquid proto-neutron star inner crust
• Investigating Possible Existence of Hyper-Heavy Nuclei in Neutron Star Environment
• Nuclear structure calculations for neutron-star crusts