Superconducting phases in a two-component microscale model of neutron star cores

Understand

We identify the possible ground states for a mixture of two superfluid condensates (one neutral, the other electrically charged) using a phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau model.

• While this framework is applicable to any interacting condensed-matter mixture of a charged and a neutral component, we focus on nuclear matter in neutron star cores, where proton and neutron condensates are coupled via non-dissipative entrainment.
• We employ the Skyrme interaction to determine the neutron star's equilibrium composition, and hence obtain realistic coefficients for our Ginzburg-Landau model at each depth within the star's core.
• We then use the Ginzburg-Landau model to determine the ground state in the presence of a magnetic field.