This work studies the structure and dynamics of the inner crust of neutron stars where nuclear matter is expected to form slabs or so-called pasta phases. The authors report a first fully self-consistent calculation of the structure of the Coulomb lattice of nuclei immersed in a sea of dripped neutrons, taking fully into account, and on the same footing, both the band structure and superfluid effects. They employ a real-time method to extract the collective masses of a slab and of protons, which in turn quantify the conduction-neutron number density and the neutron effective mass, known as the entrainment effect. The results agree with recent self-consistent band calculations without superfluidity and demonstrate that the neutron effective mass is substantially reduced up to about 42% in the slab phase; superfluidity slightly enhances this anti-entrainment effect. The current one-dimensional formalism can be extended to two and three dimensions once the computational challenges of parallelization have been successfully addressed. This gives hope that the controversial situation concerning the entrainment effects in the inner crust of neutron stars can be resolved.
Synopsis: Adding Certainty to Plutonium’s Fission Yield
