2011/11/30 by Alexandros Gezerlis, Rishi Sharma · 2 citations
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Atomic physics #Chemistry #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Homogeneous #Magnetar #Neutron #Neutron star #Nuclear physics #Pairing #Physics #Polarization (electrochemistry) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #Statistical physics #Superconductivity #Superfluidity #cond-mat.quant-gas #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevc.85.015806
published as Phys. Rev. C 85, 015806 (2012) · 7 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2012/01/17 · openalex publication_date 2012/01/17 · arxiv updated 2012/01/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Low-density neutron matter has been studied extensively for many decades, with a view to better understanding the properties of neutron-star crusts and neutron-rich nuclei. Neutron matter is beyond experimental control, but in the past decade it has become possible to create systems of fermionic ultracold atomic gases in a regime close to low-density neutron matter. In both these contexts pairing is significant, making simple perturbative approaches impossible to apply and necessitating ab initio microscopic simulations. Atomic experiments have also probed polarized matter. In this work, we study population-imbalanced neutron matter (possibly relevant to magnetars and to density functionals of nuclei) arriving at the lowest-energy configuration to date. For small-to-intermediate relative fractions, the system turns out to be fully normal, while beyond a critical polarization we find phase coexistence between a partially polarized normal neutron gas and a balanced superfluid gas. As in cold atoms, a homogeneous polarized superfluid is close to stability but not stable with respect to phase separation. We also study the dependence of the critical polarization on the density.