Speaker
Description
The crust of a neutron star has a profound influence on various observed astrophysical phenomena such as pulsar sudden spin-ups, quasi-periodic oscillations in the giant flares from soft gamma-ray repeaters, X-ray bursts and superbursts, or the cooling of transiently accreting neutron stars. We have determined the internal constitution and the equation of state of neutron-star crusts in the framework of the nuclear energy density functional theory. Results using recent versions of the accurately calibrated Brussels-Montreal functionals based on generalized Skyrme effective interactions will be presented. The role of the stiffness of the neutron-matter equation of state, of the symmetry energy, of pairing, and of the spin-orbit coupling on the structure of neutron-star crusts will be discussed.
