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Armen Sedrakian

Publications and source records attributed to Armen Sedrakian.

159 records · Page 9Linked to original sources
arXiv2005

Type-I superconductivity and neutron star precession

Type-I proton superconducting cores of neutron stars break up in a magnetic field into alternating domains of superconducting and normal fluids. We examine two channels of superfluid-normal fluid friction where (i) rotational vortices are decoupled from the non-superconducting domains and the interaction is due to the strong force between protons and neutrons; (ii) the non-superconducting domains are dynamically coupled to the vortices and the vortex motion generates transverse electric fields within them, causing electronic current flow and Ohmic dissipation. The obtained dissipation coefficients are consistent with the Eulerian precession.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2004

Direct Urca neutrino radiation from superfluid baryonic matter

Dense matter in compact stars cools efficiently by neutrino emission via the direct Urca processes n -> p + e + nu and p + e -> n + nu. Below the pairing phase transition temperature Tc these processes are suppressed - at asymptotically low temperatures exponentially. We compute the emissivity of the Urca process at one loop for temperatures T < Tc, in the case where the baryons are paired in the 1S0 partial wave. The Urca process is suppressed linearly, rather than exponentially, within the temperature range 0.1 < T/Tc < 1. The charge-current Cooper pair-breaking process contributes up to 50% of the total Urca emissivity in this temperature range.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2004

Oscillations of Bose-Einstein condensates with vortex lattices. II. Finite temperatures

We derive the finite temperature oscillation modes of a harmonically confined Bose-Einstein condensed gas undergoing rigid body rotation supported by a vortex lattice in the condensate. The hydrodynamic modes separate into two classes corresponding to in-phase (center-of-mass) and counter-phase (relative) oscillations of the thermal cloud and the condensate. The in- and counter-phase oscillations are independent of each other in the case where the thermal cloud is inviscid for all modes studied, except the radial pulsations which couple them because the pressure perturbations of the condensate and the thermal cloud are governed by different adiabatic indices. If the thermal cloud is viscous, the two classes of oscillations are coupled, i.e. each type of motion involves simultaneously mass and entropy currents. The counter-phase oscillations are damped by the mutual friction between the condensate and the thermal cloud mediated by the vortex lattice. The damping is large for the values of the drag-to-lift ratio of the order of unity and becomes increasingly ineffective in either limit of small or large friction. An experimental measurement of a subset of these oscillation modes and their damping rates can provide information on the values of the phenomenological mutual friction coefficients, and hence the quasiparticle-vortex scattering processes in dilute atomic Bose gases.

cond-mat.soft↗
arXiv2004

Phases of asymmetric nuclear matter with broken space symmetries

Isoscalar Cooper pairing in isospin asymmetric nuclear matter occurs between states populating two distinct Fermi surfaces, each for neutrons and protons. The transition from a BCS-like to the normal (unpaired) state, as the isospin asymmetry is increased, is intervened by superconducting phases which spontaneously break translational and rotational symmetries. One possibility is the formation of a condensate with a periodic crystallinelike structure where Cooper pairs carry net momentum (the nuclear Larkin-Ovchinnikov-Fulde-Ferrell-phase). Alternatively, perturbations of the Fermi surfaces away from spherical symmetry allow for minima in the condensate free energy which correspond to a states with quadrupole deformations of Fermi surfaces and zero momentum of the Cooper pairs. In a combined treatment of these phases we show that, although the Cooper pairing with finite momentum might arise as a local minimum, the lowest energy state features are deformed Fermi surfaces and Cooper pairs with vanishing total momentum.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2004

Pairing in nuclear systems with effective Gogny and V_low-k interactions

The pairing properties of nuclear systems are a sensitive probe of the effective nucleon-nucleon interactions. We compare the 1S0 pairing gaps in nuclear and neutron matter derived from the phenomenological Gogny interaction and a renormalization group motivated low-momentum V_low-k interaction extracted from realistic interactions. We find that the pairing gaps predicted by these interactions are in an excellent agreement in a wide range of sub-nuclear densities. The close agreement between the predictions of the effective forces remains intact in the case where the single particle spectra in neutron and nuclear matter are renormalized within the Hartree-Fock theory.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2003

Off-shell pairing correlations from meson-exchange theory of nuclear forces

We develop a model of off-mass-shell pairing correlations in nuclear systems, which is based on the meson-exchange picture of nuclear interactions. The temporal retardations in the model are generated by the Fock-exchange diagrams. The kernel of the complex gap equation for baryons is related to the in-medium spectral function of mesons, which is evaluated nonperturbatively in the random phase approximation. The model is applied to the low-density neutron matter in neutron star crusts by separating the interaction into a long-range one-pion-exchange component and a short-range component parametrized in terms of Landau Fermi liquid parameters. The resulting Eliashberg-type coupled nonlinear integral equations are solved by an iterative procedure.We find that the self-energies extend to off-shell energies of the order of several tens of MeV. At low energies the damping of the neutron pair correlations due to the coupling to the pionic modes is small, but becomes increasingly important as the energy is increased. We discuss an improved quasiclassical approximation under which the numerical solutions are obtained.

nucl-th↗
arXiv1999

Coherence Effects and Neutrino Pair Bremsstrahlung in Neutron Stars

We calculate the rate of energy radiation by bremsstrahlung of neutrino pairs by baryons in neutron stars employing a transport model in which neutrinos couple to baryons with spectral width. The coherence effects, which are included by computing the self energies with fully dressed propagators, lead to the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal suppression of the neutrino emission rates in the soft neutrino and high temperature limit. A microscopic evaluation of the bremsstrahlung rate by neutrons is carried out using the Brueckner theory of nuclear matter at finite temperatures.

nucl-th↗
arXiv1999

Thermodynamics of $n$-$p$ condensate in asymmetric nuclear matter

We study the neutron-proton pairing in nuclear matter as a function of isospin asymmetry at finite temperatures and the saturation density using realistic nuclear forces and Brueckner-renormalized single particle spectra. Our computation of the thermodynamic quantities shows that while the difference of the entropies of the superconducting and normal phases anomalously changes its sign as a function of temperature for arbitrary asymmetry, the grand canonical potential does not; the superconducting state is found to be stable in the whole temperature-asymmetry plane. The pairing gap completely disappears for density-asymmetries exceeding $α_c= (n_n-n_p)/n \simeq 0.11$.

nucl-th↗
arXiv1999

Vortex-interface interactions and generation of glitches in pulsars

We show that the crust-core interface in neutron stars acts as a potential barrier to the peripheral neutron vortices approaching the interface in the model in which these are coupled to the proton vortex clusters. This elementary barrier because of the interaction of vortex magnetic flux with the Meissner currents set up by the crustal magnetic field at the interface. The dominant part of the force is derived from to the cluster-interface interaction. As a result of the stopping of the continuous neutron vortex current through the interface, angular momentum is stored in the superfluid layers in the vicinity of the crust-core interface during the interglitch period. Discontinuous annihilation of proton vortices on the boundary restores the neutron vortex current and spins up the observable crust on short time-scales, leading to a glitch in the spin characteristics of a pulsar.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1999

Impact of internal heating on the thermal evolution of neutron stars

The impact of various competing heating processes on the thermal evolution of neutron stars is investigated. We show that internal heating leads to significantly enhanced surface temperatures for pulsars of middle and old age. The heating due to thermal creep of pinned vortices and due to outward motion of proton vortices in the interior of the star leads to a better agreement with the observed data in the case of enhanced cooling. The strong pinning models are ruled out by a comparison with the cooling data on the old pulsars. For millisecond pulsars, the heating due to thermal creep of pinned vortices and chemical heating of the core have the largest impact on the surface temperatures. The angular dependence of the heating rates require two dimensional cooling simulations in general. Such a simulation is performed for a selected case in order to check the applicability of one-dimensional codes used in the past.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1998

Precession of isolated neutron stars I: Effects of imperfect pinning

We consider the precession of isolated neutron stars in which superfluid is not pinned to the stellar crust perfectly. In the case of perfect pinning, Shaham (1977) showed that there are no slowly oscillatory, long-lived modes. When the assumption of perfect pinning is relaxed, new modes are found that can be long-lived, but are expected to be damped rather than oscillatory, unless the drag force on moving superfluid vortex lines has a substantial component perpendicular to the direction of relative motion. The response of a neutron star to external torques, such as the spindown torque, is also treated. We find that when computing the response of a star to perturbations, assuming perfect coupling of superfluid to normal matter from the start can miss some effects.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1998

Damping of differential rotation in neutron stars

We derive the transport relaxation times for quasiparticle-vortex scattering processes via nuclear force, relevant for the damping of differential rotation of superfluids in the quantum liquid core of a neutron star. The proton scattering off the neutron vortices provides the dominant resistive force on the vortex lattice at all relevant temperatures in the phase where neutrons only are in the paired state. If protons are superconducting, a small fraction of hyperons and resonances in the normal state would be the dominant source of friction on neutron and proton vortex lattices at the core temperatures $T\ge 10^{7}$ K.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1998

Neutron-Phonon Interaction in Neutron Star Crusts

The phonon spectrum of Coulomb lattice in neutron star crusts above the neutron drip density is affected by the interaction with the ambient neutron Fermi-liquid. For the values of the neutron-phonon coupling constant in the range $0.1 \le λ\le 1$ an appreciable renormalization of the phonon spectrum occurs which can lead to a lattice instability manifested in an exponential growth of the density fluctuations. The BCS phonon exchange mechanism of superconductivity leads to neutron pairing with a gap in the neutron excitation spectrum comparable to that due to the direct nuclear interaction.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1998

Spin Evolution of Pulsars with Weakly Coupled Superfluid Interiors

We discuss the spin evolution of pulsars in the case where a superfluid component of the star is coupled to the observable crust on long, spindown timescales. The momentum transfer from the superfluid interior results in an apparent decay of the external torque and, after a dramatic increase, to an asymptotic decrease of the generic value of the braking index, e.g. $n=3$, to values $n\sim 2.5$ if the magnetic field of the star does not decay over its lifetime. In the case where an exponential decay of the magnetic field towards a residual value occurs, the star undergoes a spin-up phase after which it could emerge in the millisecond sector of the $P$-$\dot P$ diagram.

astro-ph↗