Charge distribution and radii in clusters from nuclear pasta models

TL;DR

This paper investigates charge distributions and radii of neutron star crust nuclei using semiclassical pasta models, comparing results with experimental nuclear properties and analyzing neutron/proton skins and binding energies.

Contribution

It introduces a Monte Carlo many-body approach with a specific Hamiltonian to study non iso-symmetric clusters in neutron star crusts, highlighting the development of neutron and proton skins.

Findings

Neutron-rich clusters develop neutron skins.

Proton-deficient clusters develop proton skins.

Computed radii and binding energies align with experimental data.

Abstract

We study the consistency of the description of charge distributions and radii of nuclear clusters obtained with semiclassical nuclear pasta models. These nuclei are expected to exist in the low density outer crust of neutron stars. Properties of the arising clusterized nucleon matter can be compared to realistic nuclear properties as experimentally extracted on earth. We focus on non iso-symmetric light clusters with nucleon number $8 \le A \le 30$ and use Monte Carlo many-body techniques. We simulate isotopic chains for a set of selected nuclei using a model Hamiltonian consisting of the usual kinetic term, hadronic nucleon nucleon (NN), Coulomb and an effective density dependent Pauli potential. It is shown that for neutron rich (deficient) clusters neutron (proton) skins develop. Different (matter, neutron, proton, electric charge) radii are computed for this set of non iso-symmetric nuclei. Nuclear binding energies are also analyzed in the isotopic chains.