Surface energy of magnetized superconducting matter in the neutron star cores

TL;DR

This paper develops an effective field theory to analyze the surface energy of magnetized superconducting matter in neutron star cores, revealing how various couplings influence superconductivity types.

Contribution

It introduces a phenomenological model for proton superconductor and neutron superfluid interactions, providing analytical and numerical insights into surface energy and critical parameters in neutron star matter.

Findings

Critical Ginzburg-Landau parameter $rac{}{}$ is derived analytically.

Coupling effects on superconductivity type are quantified and found to be minimal.

Numerical simulations support the analytical predictions.

Abstract

In this paper, an effective field theory for proton superconductor (SC) interacting with neutron superfluid (SF), both with scalar order parameters, is developed and applied to the surface energy (SE) of a magnetized SC body in neutron stars (NS). Essentially, the SE studied here differs from the nuclear SE: here, the proton SF density decays to zero while the total proton density is constant across the surface. Interactions between the condensates are parameterized phenomenologically and their effects determined from calculations of a planar SE as the ranges of parameters are varied. The critical Ginzburg-Landau (GL) parameter $\kappa_c$ which renders the SE equal to zero is found analytically by noting that in a system with vanishing SE the thermodynamic critical MF is equivalent to the upper critical MF. In the case of weak coupling, $\kappa_c$ is shown to be a linear function of SF-SF density-density coupling, in agreement with the earlier results based on asymptotic intervortex interactions. Numerical simulations corroborate our analytical predictions. Coupling due to the mixed term arising from a scalar product of gradients of the SF densities, which had been considered in the earlier literature, is seen to have practically no effect on the superconductivity type. However, this coupling does produce a frozen wave packet of the SF neutron density localized at the surface. It is shown that the leading contribution from the gradient coupling arises from a novel mixed quantum pressure term, but still does not affect the planar SE. The present calculations provide an initial map of superconductivity types in the phenomenological effective field theory and will serve as a landmark for future studies, which require microscopic calculations of the coupling parameters introduced here phenomenologically.