Coulomb Stability-Shatter: Consequences for Compact-Stars

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Coulomb interactions and magnetic fields affect the stability of dense plasma in compact stars, revealing conditions that can lead to instability and impact star mass limits and gamma-ray burst phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of Coulomb and magnetic effects on plasma stability in compact stars, highlighting conditions causing instability and potential astrophysical consequences.

Findings

Magnetic instability occurs due to Landau electron spin-orbit quantization.

Coulomb interaction can destabilize plasma at critical magnetic fields.

Instability influences mass limits of magnetic compact stars and relates to gamma-ray bursts.

Abstract

In this research the transverse hydrostatic stability of a gravitating Fermi-Dirac plasma under a quantizing field is explored. It is revealed that such plasma is magnetically unstable due to the Landau electron spin-orbit quantization in all magnetic levels which might explain the gravitational compactification in the case of magnetic compact-stars. It is also revealed that the Coulomb interaction plays a fundamental role in the magnetic instability when a critical field is reached for a given plasma composition. It is remarked that, the Coulomb interaction, on specific condition depending on the field-strength and plasma composition, can suddenly destroy the transverse stability of the relativistically degenerate Fermi-Dirac plasma. The consequences of such instability on mass-limit of magnetic compact-stars and the neutron star crust with possible relation to gamma-ray bursts is numerically examined.