Pasta fluctuations in symmetric matter at finite temperature

TL;DR

This paper investigates the fluctuations and coexistence of various pasta shapes in symmetric nuclear matter at finite temperature, using a mean field approach that aligns with molecular dynamics results but at lower computational cost.

Contribution

It introduces a mean field Gibbs energy functional method to analyze pasta shape fluctuations and coexistence in symmetric matter at finite temperature.

Findings

Fluctuations increase with temperature and density.

Different pasta shapes coexist over wide density and temperature ranges.

Results agree qualitatively with large scale molecular dynamics simulations.

Abstract

The equilibrium distributions of the different pasta geometries and their linear sizes are calculated from the mean field Gibbs energy functional in symmetric nuclear matter at finite temperature. The average sizes and shapes coincide approximately with the ones predicted by a standard pasta calculation in the coexisting phase approximation, but fluctuations are additionally calculated and seen to increase with temperature and baryonic density. The different pasta shapes are shown to coexist in a wide domain of density and temperature, in qualitative agreement with the findings of large scale molecular dynamics simulations, but with a much less expensive computational cost.