Pairing properties of the inner crust of neutron stars at finite temperature

Abstract

Abstract.We investigate the thermal properties of the inner crust of a neutron star using the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) formalism at finite temperature. We compare our results with the ones obtained solving the same equations, but within the BCS approximation. We observe that for the outermost regions of the inner crust, the two methods can show important differences, in particular when we use them to calculate the neutron specific heat of the system.

Pairing properties and specific heat of the inner crust of a neutron star

“…The result has been later confirmed in Refs. [12,13]. Within the standard BCS theory [14,15], one can see that the superfluid phase disappears beyond a certain value of the temperature of the system, T c , since Cooper pairs are broken due to thermal fluctuations.…”

Impact Of Pairing Correlations On The Chemical Composition Of The Inner Crust Of A Neutron Star

“…Since the WS cell is composed by a cluster immersed in a neutron gas, once could expect that a simple BCS approximation could be enough to discuss pairing correlations [23,28]. We have thus compared fully self-consistent HFB and BCS calculation showing that the discrepancy on the energy per particle of the two calculations is very small.…”

Pairing effects in nuclear pasta phase within the relativistic Thomas–Fermi formalism

“…The shear and bulk viscosity are strongly affected by the presence of superfluid neutrons [30]. The specific heat of the pasta phase was shown to be very sensitive to pairing properties [31][32][33], significantly affecting the thermalization of NS crusts [34]. Besides the specific heat, thermalization is also influenced by neutrino emissivity, and pairing effects are expected to be important in this subject too [35,36].…”