Neutron Star Crusts

Abstract

The formation, structure, composition, and the equation of state of neutron star crusts are described. A scenario of formation of the crust in a newly born neutron star is considered and a model of evolution of the crust composition during the early neutron star cooling is presented. Structure of the ground state of the crust is studied. In the case of the outer crust, recent nuclear data on masses of neutron rich nuclei are used. For the inner crust, results of different many-body calculations are presented, and dependence on the assumed effective nucleon-nucleon interaction is discussed. Un- certainties concerning the bottom layers of the crust and crust-liquid interface are illustrated using results of various many-body calculations based on different effective nucleon-nucleon interactions. A scenario of formation of a crust of matter-accreting neutron star is presented, and evolution of the crust-matter element under the in- creasing pressure of accreted layer is studied. Within a specific dense matter model, composition of accreted crust is calculated, and is shown to be vastly different from the ground-state one. Non-equilibrium processes in the crust of mass-accreting neutron star are studied, heat release due to them is estimated, and their relevance to the prop- erties of X-ray sources is briefly discussed. Equation of state of the ground-state crust is presented, and compared with that for accreted crust. Elastic properties of the crust are reviewed. Possible deviations from idealized models of one-component plasmas are briefly discussed.