Surface tension of the core-crust interface of neutron stars with global charge neutrality

Understand

It has been shown recently that taking into account strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational interactions, and fulfilling the global charge neutrality of the system, a transition layer will happen between the core and crust of neutron stars, at the nuclear saturation density.

• We use relativistic mean field theory together with the Thomas-Fermi approximation to study the detailed structure of this transition layer and calculate its surface and Coulomb energy.
• We find that the surface tension is proportional to a power-law function of the baryon number density in the core bulk region.
• We also analyze the influence of the electron component and the gravitational field on the structure of the transition layer and the value of the surface tension to compare and contrast with known phenomenological results in nuclear physics.