Pycnonuclear burning of <sup><nobr>34</nobr></sup>Ne in accreting neutron stars期刊界 All Journals 搜尽天下杂志传播学术成果专业期刊搜索期刊信息化学术搜索

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Pycnonuclear burning of ³⁴Ne in accreting neutron stars

Authors:	D G Yakovlev L Gasques M Wiescher

Institution:	Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, Politekhnicheskaya 26, 194021 Saint-Petersburg, Russia;Department of Physics and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA

Abstract:	We study the pycnonuclear burning of ³⁴Ne in the inner crust of an accreting neutron star. We show that the associated energy production rate can be calculated analytically for any arbitrary temporal variability of the mass accretion rate. We argue that the theoretical time-scale for ³⁴Ne burning is currently very uncertain and ranges from a fraction of a millisecond to a few years. The fastest allowable burning may change the composition of the accreted crust while the slowest burning leads to a time-independent nuclear energy generation rate for a variable accretion. The results are important for constructing self-consistent models of the accreted crust and deep crustal heating in neutron stars which enter soft X-ray transients.

Keywords:	dense matter nuclear reactions nucleosynthesis abundances stars: neutron