ELECTRON-ION SCATTERING IN DENSE MULTI-COMPONENT PLASMAS: APPLICATION TO THE OUTER CRUST OF AN ACCRETING NEUTRON STAR

Journal Article · Sun Sep 20 00:00:00 EDT 2009 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/703/1/994· OSTI ID:21371947

Daligault, J; Gupta, S ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (United States)

The thermal conductivity of a dense multi-component plasma (MCP) is critical to the modeling of accreting neutron stars. To this end, we perform large-scale molecular dynamics simulations to calculate the static structure factor of the dense MCP in the neutron star crust from near the photosphere-ocean boundary to the vicinity of the neutron drip point. The structure factors are used to validate a microscopic linear mixing rule that is valid for arbitrarily complex plasmas over a wide range of Coulomb couplings. The microscopic mixing rule in turn implies and validates the linear mixing rule (LMR) for the equation of state properties and also the LMR for the electrical and thermal conductivities of dense MCPs. To make our result as useful as possible, for the specific cases of electrical and thermal conductivities, we provide a simple analytic fit that is valid for arbitrarily complex MCPs over a wide range of Coulomb couplings. We compute the thermal conductivity for a representative compositional profile of the outer crust of an accreting neutron star in which hundreds of nuclear species can be present. We utilize our results to re-examine the so-called impurity parameter formalism as used to characterize impure plasmas.

• OSTI ID: 21371947
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 703, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/703/1/994; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ABUNDANCE
ELECTRON-ION COLLISIONS
ELECTRONS
EQUATIONS OF STATE
MOLECULAR DYNAMICS METHOD
NEUTRON STARS
NEUTRONS
NUCLEAR REACTIONS
NUCLEOSYNTHESIS
PHOTOSPHERE
PLASMA
SCATTERING
SIMULATION
STRUCTURE FACTORS
THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY
X RADIATION
ATMOSPHERES
BARYONS
CALCULATION METHODS
COLLISIONS
DIMENSIONLESS NUMBERS
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
ELECTRON COLLISIONS
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
EQUATIONS
FERMIONS
HADRONS
ION COLLISIONS
IONIZING RADIATIONS
LEPTONS
NUCLEONS
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
RADIATIONS
SOLAR ATMOSPHERE
STARS
STELLAR ATMOSPHERES
SYNTHESIS
THERMODYNAMIC PROPERTIES