Do short range correlations inhibit the appearance of the nuclear pasta?

TL;DR

This study investigates how short-range correlations influence the nuclear pasta phase, revealing that SRC can significantly reduce or eliminate complex structures in neutron-rich matter, especially at high asymmetry and temperature.

Contribution

First to incorporate short-range correlations into nuclear pasta calculations, showing their impact on phase size and internal structure at zero temperature.

Findings

SRC cause the nuclear pasta phase to shrink significantly.

Complex internal structures vanish with increasing asymmetry and temperature.

Droplet structures remain as the simplest form of pasta.

Abstract

It is well known that strongly correlated neutron-proton pairs, the short-range correlations (SRC), can modify many of the nuclear properties. In this work we have introduced, for the first time, short range correlations in the calculation of the nuclear pasta phase at zero temperature and checked how they affect its size and internal structure. We have used two different parameterizations of relativistic models in a mean field approximation and the coexistence phase approximation as a first estimation of the effects. We have seen that for very asymmetric neutron-proton-electon matter, the pasta phase shrinks considerably as compared with the results without SRC and all internal structures vanish, except the simple spherically symmetric one, the droplets. Our results indicate a possible disappearance of these complicated structures as the temperature increases.