2017/04/30 by Gentaro Watanabe, C. J. Pethick · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Crust #Geophysics #Glitch #Moment of inertia #Neutron #Neutron star #Nuclear physics #Pairing #Physics #Pulsar #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #Stars #Superconductivity #Superfluidity #astro-ph.HE #cond-mat.quant-gas #nucl-th #r-process #s-process
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.119.062701
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 062701 (2017) · 5 pages, 3 figures
openalex publication_date 2017/08/10 · arxiv created 2017/08/14 · arxiv updated 2017/08/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Calculations of the effects of band structure on the neutron superfluid density in the crust of neutron stars made under the assumption that the effects of pairing are small [N. Chamel, Phys. Rev. C 85, 035801 (2012)PRVCAN0556-2813] lead to moments of inertia of superfluid neutrons so small that the crust alone is insufficient to account for the magnitude of neutron star glitches. Inspired by earlier work on ultracold atomic gases in an optical lattice, we investigate fermions with attractive interactions in a periodic lattice in the mean-field approximation. The effects of band structure are suppressed when the pairing gap is of order or greater than the strength of the lattice potential. By applying the results to the inner crust of neutron stars, we conclude that the reduction of the neutron superfluid density is considerably less than previously estimated and, consequently, it is premature to rule out models of glitches based on neutron superfluidity in the crust.