Nuclear “pasta” phase in a triaxial relativistic mean field approach

Abstract

The crust of a neutron star is of special interest because of the phase transition from a gas of nuclei to homogeneous asymmetric nuclear matter. Several efforts have been made to explore the nuclear matter in this region of the neutron star. These calculations have been done mostly in spherical Wigner–Seitz-cells using Skyrme Hartree–Fock (HF) or relativistic mean field (RMF) calculations. We apply both approaches in a Cartesian Wigner–Seitz-cell and get a smooth transition from nuclei to homogeneous matter showing various shapes. In this article we pay special attention to the relativistic mean field. Pairing is included in the BCS approximation.