arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Mateus R. Pelicer.
We study how the nuclear symmetry energy slope ($L$) can affect the hadron-quark phase transition and neutron star properties. We show that the main physical quantities as the critical chemical potential and pressure are strongly influenced by the symmetry energy slope. In extreme cases, the total amount of deconfined quarks can reach up to 99$\%$ of the hybrid star mass.
It is well known that strongly correlated neutron-proton pairs, the short-range correlations (SRC), can modify many of the nuclear properties. In this work we have introduced, for the first time, short range correlations in the calculation of the nuclear pasta phase at zero temperature and checked how they affect its size and internal structure. We have used two different parameterizations of relativistic models in a mean field approximation and the coexistence phase approximation as a first estimation of the effects. We have seen that for very asymmetric neutron-proton-electon matter, the pasta phase shrinks considerably as compared with the results without SRC and all internal structures vanish, except the simple spherically symmetric one, the droplets. Our results indicate a possible disappearance of these complicated structures as the temperature increases.
We study the nuclear isentropic equation of state for a stellar matter composed of nucleons, hyperons, and $Δ$-resonances. We investigate different snapshots of the evolution of a neutron star, from its birth as a lepton-rich protoneutron star in the aftermath of a supernova explosion to a lepton-poor regime when the star starts cooling to a catalyzed configuration. We use a relativistic model within the mean-field approximation to describe the hot stellar matter and adopt density-dependent couplings adjusted by the DDME2 parameterization. We use baryon-meson couplings for the spin-$1/2$ baryonic octet and spin-$3/2$ decuplet determined in a unified manner relying on $\text{SU}(6)$ and $\text{SU}(3)$ symmetry arguments. We observe that $Λ$ is the dominant exotic particle in the star at different entropies for both neutrino-free and neutrino-trapped stellar matter. For a fixed entropy, the inclusion of new particles (hyperons and/or delta resonances) in the stellar matter decreases the temperature. Also, an increase in entropy per baryon ($1\;\text{to}\; 2$) with decreasing lepton number density ($0.4\;\text{to}\; 0.2$) leads to an increase in stellar radii and a decrease in its mass due to neutrino diffusion. In the neutrino transparent matter, the radii decrease from entropy per baryon $2$ to $T\,=\,0$ without a significant change in stellar mass.
The presence of nuclear pasta is expected to modify the transport properties in the mantle of neutron stars. The non-spherical geometry of the pasta nuclear clusters leads to anisotropies in the collision frequencies, impacting the thermal and electrical conductivity. We derive analytical expressions for the anisotropic collision frequencies using the Boltzmann equation in the relaxation time approximation. The average parallel, perpendicular and Hall electrical conductivities are computed in the high-temperature regime above crustal melting, considering incoherent elastic electron-pasta scattering and randomly oriented pasta structures. Numerical values are obtained at different densities and temperatures by using the IUFSU parametrization of the non-linear Walecka model to determine the crustal structure. We find that the anisotropy of the collision frequencies grows with the length of the pasta structures and, independently of the magnetic field, the presence of rod and slab phases decreases the conductivity by more than one order of magnitude. Our numerical results indicate that, even if the pasta structures might survive above the crustal melting point, no strong anisotropies are to be expected in the conduction properties in this temperature regime, even in the presence of a very high magnetic field.
Baryonic matter close to the saturation density is very likely to present complex inhomogeneous structures collectively known under the name of pasta phase. At finite temperature, the different geometric structures are expected to coexist, with potential consequences on the neutron star crust conductivity and neutrino transport in supernova matter. In the framework of a statistical multi-component approach, we calculate the composition of matter in the pasta phase considering density, proton fraction, and geometry fluctuations. Using a realistic energy functional from relativistic mean field theory and a temperature and isospin dependent surface tension fitted from Thomas-Fermi calculations, we show that different geometries can coexist in a large fraction of the pasta phase, down to temperatures of the order of the crystallization temperature of the neutron star crust. Quantitative estimates of the charge fluctuations are given.