Abstract
The outer crust of an accreted neutron star is thought to contain a large distribution of different nuclear species resulting from the burying of ashes of X-ray bursts and superbursts. By analysing the stability of multicomponent Coulomb crystals against phase separation, it is found that various binary and ternary ionic compounds could be formed.
Highlights
Many properties of the crust of a neutron star depend to a large extent on its structure, which in turn have implications for various astrophysical phenomena, such as Crab like pulsar sudden spin-ups, thermal relaxation in transiently accreting stars, giant flares from soft gamma-ray repeaters, and gravitational-wave emission.The outermost region of a neutron star is expected to be made of iron 56Fe, the endproduct of stellar nucleosynthesis
Ab initio calculations predict various structural phase transitions at higher pressures. Such pressures are tremendous according to terrestrial standards, they still remain negligibly small compared with those prevailing in a neutron star
We have found that substitutional binary compounds with cesium chloride structure are generally present at the interface between adjacent layers in the outer crust of a cold nonaccreted neutron star [8], as first shown in Ref. [12]
Summary
Many properties of the crust of a neutron star depend to a large extent on its structure, which in turn have implications for various astrophysical phenomena, such as Crab like pulsar sudden spin-ups, thermal relaxation in transiently accreting stars, giant flares from soft gamma-ray repeaters, and gravitational-wave emission (see, e.g., Ref. [1]). The properties of compressed iron can be probed in terrestrial laboratories up to pressures of order 1014 dyn cm−2 (densities of a few tens of g cm−3) with nuclear explosions and laser-driven shock-wave experiments. Under these conditions, iron has an hexagonal close-packed structure [2]. We have found that substitutional binary compounds with cesium chloride structure are generally present at the interface between adjacent layers in the outer crust of a cold nonaccreted neutron star [8], as first shown in Ref. We pursue our investigations in accreted neutron-star crusts
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