1211.5582 (C. O. Dorso et al.)

Cold nuclear matter    [PDF]

C. O. Dorso, P. A. Giménez Molinelli, J. I. Nichols, J. A. López

We study the behavior of cold nuclear matter near saturation density (\rho 0) and very low temperature using classical molecular dynamics. We used three different (classical) nuclear interaction models that yield `medium' or `stiff' compressibilities. For high densities and for every model the ground state is a classical crystalline solid, but each one with a different structure. At subsaturation densities, we found that for every model the transition from uniform (crystal) to non-uniform matter occurs at \rho ~ 0.12 fm^(-3) = 0.75 \rho 0. Surprisingly, at the non-uniform phase, the three models produce `pasta-like' structures as those allegedly present in neutron star matter but without the long-range Coulomb interaction and with different length scales.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.5582