Joshua Hooker

Efficacy of crustal superfluid neutrons in pulsar glitch models

In order to assess the ability of purely crust-driven glitch models to match the observed glitch activity in the Vela pulsar, we conduct a systematic analysis of the dependence of the fractional moment of inertia of the inner crustal neutrons on the stiffness of the nuclear symmetry energy at saturation density

Constraints on the symmetry energy from observational probes of the neutron star crust

L

Imprints of Nuclear Symmetry Energy on Properties of Neutron Stars

. We take into account both crustal entrainment and the fact that only a fraction

Upper limits on the observational effects of nuclear pasta in neutron stars

Y_{\rm g}

The cooling of the Cassiopeia A neutron star as a probe of the nuclear symmetry energy and nuclear pasta

of the core neutrons may couple to the crust on the glitch-rise timescale. We use a set of consistently-generated crust and core compositions and equations-of-state which are fit to results of low-density pure neutron matter calculations. When entrainment is included at the level suggested by recent microscopic calculations and the core is fully coupled to the crust, the model is only able to account for the Vela glitch activity for a 1.4

Alpha-capture reaction rates for 22Ne(alpha,n) via sub-Coulomb alpha-transfer

M_{\odot}

Probing the cluster structure in

star if the equation of state is particularly stiff

^{10}

L>100

Be using resonant

MeV. However, an uncertainty of about 10\% in the crust-core transition density and pressure allows for the Vela glitch activity to be marginally accounted for in the range

^{6}

L\approx30-60