Orateur
Mlle
Irene DEDES
(IPHC)
Description
Neutron stars are the cold, dead remnants of the gravitational collapse of massive stars that ended
their lives in violent supernova explosions. With a mass around 1.5{2 times the mass of our Sun
packed within a typical radius of about 10 km, neutron stars are among the most compact objects in
the universe. This makes neutron stars unique natural laboratories for testing the physical theories of
dense matter.
In this work we study the outer crust of cold, nonaccreting neutron stars, and more specically the
nuclear composition of the outer crust. We intend to probe the sensitivity of the crustal composition
to the nuclear masses that are not experimentally available and need to be predicted using nuclear
models. Mapping the composition of the outer crust is strongly dependent on neutron-rich nuclides
with atomic numbers Z 20 50 near the N = 50 and N = 82 neutron shell closures. However,
the actual value of the proton and neutron numbers of the nuclides that populate the bottom layers
of the outer crust is something that until today remains elusive. It is due to the fact that such an
information is contingent on the masses of exotic neutron-rich isotopes that are not yet measured. The
present study aims to elucidate the nuclear species that have the greatest in
uence on the composition
of a neutron-star crust after the last nuclides with known masses, and to identify at the same time
the most critical new masses to be measured. The results of this type of studies may have practical
signicance for both nuclear and astrophysical research.
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Auteur principal
Mlle
Irene Dedes
(IPHC)
