Study of low density nuclear matter with quantum molecular dynamics : the role of the symmetry energy [CL]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.01842


We study the effect of isospin-dependent nuclear forces on the pasta phase in the inner crust of neutron stars. To this end we model the crust within the framework of quantum molecular dynamics (QMD). For maximizing the numerical performance, the newly developed code has been implemented on GPU processors. As a first application of the crust studies we investigate the dependence of the particular pasta phases on the slope of the symmetry energy slope L. To isolate the effect of different values of L, we adopt an established QMD Hamiltonian and extend it to include non-linear terms in the isospin-dependent interaction. The strengths of the isospin-dependent forces are used to adjust the asymmetry energy and slope of the matter. Our results indicate that in contrast to earlier studies the phase diagram of the pasta phase is not very sensitive to the value of L.

Read this paper on arXiv…

R. Nandi and S. Schramm
Mon, 11 Jan 16
29/57

Comments: 15 pages, 6 figures