Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Neutron Star Crusts

Several phenomena in Neutron Stars depend on the behavior of the high-density ion plasma present in the crust. For example, the dynamics of a core-collapse Supernova is highly sensitive to neutrino scattering from the ions. Also, the cooling times after an X-ray burst depend on the thermal conductivity of the crust, while the damping of the r-modes due to crust-core coupling may affect the emission of gravitational waves. We have performed Molecular Dynamics simulations of the ions in the crust to calculate static and dynamic structure factors, neutrino mean free paths, and some transport properties such as diffusion coefficients, the thermal conductivity and the viscosity.