The excited-state structure of atomic nuclei can modify nuclear processes in stellar environments. In this work, we study the influence of nuclear excitations on Urca cooling (repeated back-and-forth beta decay and electron capture in a pair of nuclear isotopes) in the crust and ocean of neutron stars. We provide for the first time an expression for Urca process neutrino luminosity which accounts for excited states of both members of an Urca pair. We use our new formula with state-of-the-art nuclear structure inputs to compute neutrino luminosities of candidate Urca cooling pairs. Our nuclear inputs consist of the latest experimental data supplemented with calculations using the projected shell model. We show that, in contrast with previous results that only consider the ground states of both nuclei in the pair, our calculated neutrino luminosities for different Urca pairs vary sensitively with the environment temperature and can be radically different from those obtained in the one transition approximation.
We performed a Penning trap mass measurement of $^{61}{\rm Zn}$ at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and NuShellX calculations of the $^{61}{\rm Zn}$ and $^{62}{\rm Ga}$ structure using the GXPF1A Hamiltonian to obtain improved estimates of the $^{61}{\rm Zn}(p,γ)^{62}{\rm Ga}$ and $^{60}{\rm Cu}(p,γ)^{61}{\rm Zn}$ reaction rates. Surveying astrophysical conditions for type-I X-ray bursts with the code MESA, implementing our improved reaction rates, and taking into account updated nuclear masses for $^{61}{\rm V}$ and $^{61}{\rm Cr}$ from the recent literature, we refine the ne…
Evidence of Nuclear Urca Process in the Ocean of Neutron-Star Superburst MAXI J1752$-$457
RIKEN Pioneering Research Institute (PRI)（理化学研究所前沿研究研究院）；Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院近代物理研究所）；School of Nuclear Science and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学核科学与技术学院）；RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical & Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS)（理化学研究所跨学科理论与数学科学中心）；Department of Physics, Tokyo University of Science（东京理科大学物理学系）；Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University（广岛大学先进理工学研究科）；Academi Support Center, Kogakuin University（工学院大学学术支援中心）；Center for Nuclear Study (CNS), The University of Tokyo（东京大学核研究教育中心）
X-ray observations of transiently accreting neutron stars during quiescence provide information about the structure of neutron star crusts and the properties of dense matter. Interpretation of the observational data requires an understanding of the nuclear reactions that heat and cool the crust during accretion, and define its nonequilibrium composition. We identify here in detail the typical nuclear reaction sequences down to a depth in the inner crust where the mass density is 2E12 g/cm^3 using a full nuclear reaction network for a range of initial compositions. The reaction sequences differ…
The direct URCA process of rapid neutrino emission can occur in nonuniform nuclear pasta phases that are expected in the inner crust of neutron stars. Here, the periodic potential for a nucleon in nuclear pasta allows momentum conservation to be satisfied for direct URCA reactions. We improve on earlier work by modeling a rich variety of pasta phases (gnocchi, waffle, lasagna, and anti-spaghetti) with large-scale molecular dynamics simulations. We find that the neutrino luminosity due to direct URCA reactions in nuclear pasta can be 3 to 4 orders of magnitude larger than that from the modified…
Neutron Star Core-Crust Transition and Crustal Moment of Inertia: Systematic Implications of Higher-Order Symmetry Energy in the Nuclear Equation of State
We examine the influence of the density dependence of the symmetry energy on several properties of neutron stars. In particular, we study the constraints set on the nuclear matter equation of state by the values of the tidal deformability and neutron star radius, using a diverse set of relativistic and non-relativistic mean field models consistent with bulk properties of finite nuclei and the observed lower bound on the maximum mass of neutron star. The tidal deformability and radius show a strong correlation with specific linear combinations of the isoscalar and isovector nuclear matter param…
We study the quiescent luminosities of accreting neutron stars by a new mechanism as neutrino heating for additional deep crustal heating, where the neutrino heating is produced by charged pions decay from the nuclear collisions on the surface of neutron star during its active accretion. For low mass neutron star($\lesssim1.4~M_{\odot}$), as the neutrino heating is little($\lesssim1$ MeV per accreted nucleon) or there would be no neutrino heating, the quiescent luminsoity will be not affected or slightly affected. While for massive neutron star ($\gtrsim2~M_{\odot}$), the quiescent luminosity …
本文用核子物质的一系列势场理论模型研究了原子核和中子星中同位旋不对称性的作用。这些模型的参数是通过拟合均匀块体物质和闭壳层核的性质来确定的。讨论并揭示了重核中子皮厚度、密度为0.1 fm $^{-3}$的β平衡物质压力、密度相同的核对称能导数和中等质量中子星半径之间相关性的原因。考察了原子核结合能对核物质对称性的限制。在何种程度上即将到来的中子皮测量将进一步界定的对称性进行了研究。探讨了对称性能量约束对中子星壳内质量和转动惯量的影响以及核子直接Urca过程的阈值密度，所有这些都是潜在的可测量的。我们还评论了最小中子星半径，假设只有核子物质存在的恒星。
