Electron-muon heat conduction in neutron star cores via the exchange of transverse plasmons

TL;DR

This paper calculates the thermal conductivity of electrons and muons in neutron star cores, showing how transverse plasmon exchange influences heat conduction and how superconductivity affects these properties.

Contribution

It provides new analytic formulas for electron-muon thermal conductivity considering transverse plasmon exchange and proton superconductivity effects in neutron star cores.

Findings

Transverse plasmon exchange dominates electron-muon heat conduction.

Proton superconductivity restores Fermi-liquid behavior of conductivity.

Electron-muon conductivity exceeds neutron conductivity above 2 GK in normal matter.

Abstract

We calculate the thermal conductivity of electrons and muons kappa_{e-mu} produced owing to electromagnetic interactions of charged particles in neutron star cores and show that these interactions are dominated by the exchange of transverse plasmons (via the Landau damping of these plasmons in nonsuperconducting matter and via a specific plasma screening in the presence of proton superconductivity). For normal protons, the Landau damping strongly reduces kappa_{e-mu} and makes it temperature independent. Proton superconductivity suppresses the reduction and restores the Fermi-liquid behavior kappa_{e-mu} ~ 1/T. Comparing with the thermal conductivity of neutrons kappa_n, we obtain kappa_{e-mu}> kappa_n for T>2 GK in normal matter and for any T in superconducting matter with proton critical temperatures T_c>3e9 K. The results are described by simple analytic formulae.