Nuclear matter in the crust of neutron stars

Understand

The properties of inhomogeneous nuclear matter are investigated considering the self-consistent Skyrme Hartree-Fock approach with inclusion of pairing correlations.

• For a comparison we also consider a relativistic mean field approach.
• The inhomogeneous infinite matter is described in terms of cubic Wigner-Seitz cells, which leads to a smooth transition to the limit of homogeneous nuclear matter.
• The possible existence of various structures in the so-called pasta phase is investigated within this self-consistent approach and a comparison is made to results obtained within the Thomas-Fermi approximation.