Neutron rich matter, neutron stars, and their crusts

Abstract

Neutron rich matter is at the heart of many fundamental questions in Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics. What are the high density phases of QCD? Where did the chemical elements come from? What is the structure of many compact and energetic objects in the heavens, and what determines their electromagnetic, neutrino, and gravitational-wave radiations? Moreover, neutron rich matter is being studied with an extraordinary variety of new tools such as Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). We describe the Lead Radius Experiment (PREX) that is using parity violation to measure the neutron radius in 208Pb. This has important implications for neutron stars and their crusts. Using large scale molecular dynamics, we model the formation of solids in both white dwarfs and neutron stars. We find neutron star crust to be the strongest material known, some 10 billion times stronger than steel. It can support mountains on rotating neutron stars large enough to generate detectable gravitational waves. Finally, we describe a new equation of state for supernova and neutron star merger simulations based on the Virial expansion at low densities, and large scale relativistic mean field calculations.