Physics – Nuclear Physics
Scientific paper
Aug 1972
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1972nupha.191..257a&link_type=abstract
Nuclear Physics A, Volume 191, Issue 2, p. 257-282.
Physics
Nuclear Physics
46
Scientific paper
The equation of state and the structure and composition of neutron star matter are investigated in the density region 3.1 × 1011-2 × 1015g/cm3. Below the density 3.1 × 1011 g/cm3 the matter is a solid consisting of neutron-rich nuclei in a degenerate electron gas. At 3.1 × 1011g/cm3 neutrons start to drip out of the nuclei; as the density increases, the lattice spacing continuously decreases while the geometrical size of the nuclei only slightly increases, until at about 15 × 1013g/cm3 the nuclei disappear by coalescing into a homogeneous liquid in an almost continuous phase transition. The maximum proton number per nucleus is 40, which is obtained between the densities 1-2.5 × 1013g/cm3; after that the proton number decreases until at the solid-to-liquid phase boundary it is about 20. In the liquid-core region, muons appear at the density 20.5 × 1013g/cm3.
The calculations use the differential Thomas-Fermi theory in connection with a new model for the nuclear matter energy. The model is based on the parametrization of the Brueckner G-matrix in conjunction with a few empirical requirements concerning the saturation of the symmetric nuclear matter. It is shown that very small modifications in the details of the nuclear matter energy may lead to considerable differences in the resulting neutron star structure; for example the density of matter at the solid-to-liquid phase boundary is found to be very sensitive to such details. One of the main reasons for this is that the stability of the liquid against clustering into separate nuclei depends mainly on the second derivatives of the nuclear matter energy with respect to neutron and proton densities; for these second derivatives there exist no very reliable theoretical or phenomenological predictions so far. To check that the Thomas-Fermi theory together with the model for the nuclear matter energy works satisfactorily, a test calculation is made about finite nuclei of different sizes between A = 16 and 400.
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