New Molecular Dynamics Methods for Simulating Neutron Star Crusts with Superfluid Vortices

TL;DR

This paper introduces novel molecular dynamics methods to simulate superfluid vortex interactions in neutron star crusts, revealing new phenomena related to vortex pinning and crust elasticity.

Contribution

The work develops new molecular dynamics techniques specifically for modeling vortex-crust interactions in neutron stars, highlighting phenomena like lattice entrainment.

Findings

Observation of lattice entrainment phenomena

Implications for crust elastic evolution

Comparison of pinning and Coulomb forces

Abstract

Superfluid vortices in neutron star crusts are thought to be pinned to the lattice of nuclei in the crust. The unpinning of superfluid vortices in spin glitches therefore motivates us to study the vortex-crust interaction explicitly with molecular dynamics. In this work, we present a new molecular dynamics methods to characterize the response of the crust to a rigid vortex. When vortex pinning forces and nearest neighbor Coulomb forces are comparable, we observe a qualitatively new phenomena of lattice entrainment with implications for the elastic evolution of the crust.