51 research outputs found
Superfluid neutron matter with a twist
Superfluid neutron matter is a key ingredient in the composition of neutron
stars. The physics of the inner crust is largely dependent on that of its
-wave neutron superfluid which has made its presence known through pulsar
glitches and modifications on the neutron star cooling. Moreover, with recent
gravitational-wave observations of neutron star mergers, the need for an
equation of state for the matter of these compact stars is further accentuated
and a model-independent treatment of neutron superfluidity is important.
\textit{Ab initio} techniques developed for finite systems can be guided to
perform extrapolations to the thermodynamic limit and attain this
model-independent extraction of various quantities of infinite superfluid
neutron matter. To inform such an extrapolation scheme, we performed
calculations of the neutron pairing gap using the model-independent
odd-even staggering in the context of the particle-conserving, projected BCS
theory under twisted boundary conditions. While the practice of twisted
boundary conditions is standard in solid state physics and has been used
repeatedly in the past to reduce finite-size effects, this is the first time it
is employed in the context of pairing. We find that a twist-averaging approach
results in a substantial reduction of the finite-size effects, bringing systems
with within a error margin from the infinite system.
This can significantly reduce extrapolation-related errors in the extraction of
superfluid neutron matter quantities.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures; v2 corresponds to published versio
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