Non-uniform structures in low-density nuclear matter and neutron star crust

Okamoto, Minoru; Maruyama, Toshiki  ; Yabana, Kazuhiro*; Tatsumi, Toshitaka*

In low-density nuclear matter which is relevant to neutron star crust, non-uniform structures called "nuclear pasta" are expected. In most of the previous studies, the crystalline of "nuclear pasta" and uniform background electron are assumed and/or the Wigner-Seitz (WS) cell approximation is used. For matter with droplets, body-centered cubic (bcc) lattice is found to be more favored than face-centered cubic (fcc) and simple cubic. This conclusion has been obtained by comparing the Coulomb energy with a fixed size of droplets. To be more precise, we should take into account the effect of non-uniformity of electron and optimal sizes of the droplets. We perform numerical calculations of non-uniform nuclear matter based on the relativistic mean field theory and Thomas-Fermi model with fully three-dimensional geometry. The most stable structure and the equation of state of matter with and without WS cell approximation and the energy difference between fcc and bcc for droplet are compared.