Properties of Neutron Star Crust with Improved Nuclear Physics: Impact of Chiral EFT Interactions and Experimental Nuclear Masses

Abstract

A compressible liquid-drop approach adjusted to uniform matter many-body calculations based on chiral EFT interactions and to the experimental nuclear masses is used to investigate the neutron star crust properties. Eight chiral EFT hamiltonians and a representative phenomenological force (SLy4) are confronted. We show that some properties of the crust, e.g. clusters mass, charge, and asymmetry, are mostly determined by symmetric matter properties close to saturation density and are therefore mainly constrained by experimental nuclear masses, while other properties, e.g., energy per particle, pressure, sound speed, are mostly influenced by low-density predictions in neutron matter, where chiral EFT and phenomenological forces substantially differ.