2020/11/24 by Xinle Shang, X. L. Shang, P. Wang +4
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Gravitational wave #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Instability #Neutron #Neutron star #Nuclear physics #Nucleon #Particle physics #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2020.135963
published as Phys. Lett. B, 811, 135963 (2020) · 11 pages, 6 figures
openalex publication_date 2020/11/24 · openalex created_date 2020/12/07 · arxiv created 2021/01/19 · arxiv updated 2021/01/20 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The thermal conductivity and shear viscosity of dense nuclear matter, along with the corresponding shear viscosity timescale of canonical neutron stars (NSs), are investigated, where the effect of Fermi surface depletion (i.e., the Z-factor effect) induced by the nucleon-nucleon correlation is taken into account. The factors which are responsible for the transport coefficients, including the equation of state for building the stellar structure, nucleon effective masses, in-medium cross sections, and the Z-factor at Fermi surfaces, are all calculated in the framework of the Brueckner theory. The Fermi surface depletion is found to enhance the transport coefficients by several times at high densities, which is more favorable to damping the gravitational-wave-driven r-mode instability of NSs. Yet, the onset of the Z-factor-quenched neutron triplet superfluidity provides the opposite effects, which can be much more significant than the above mentioned Z-factor effect itself. Therefore, different from the previous understanding, the nucleon shear viscosity is still smaller than the lepton one in the superfluid NS matter at low temperatures. Accordingly, the shear viscosity cannot stabilize canonical NSs against r-mode oscillations even at quite low core temperatures 106 K.