Nuclear effective interactions in the inner crust of a neutron star

The nuclear effective interactions in the inner crust are investigated in detail, where the energy density functional (EDF) is constructed with the help of the Hartree-Fock and the Extended Thomas-Fermi approximations (ETF) to treat the nucleons inside and outside the clusters. Considering the destabilization of the crystal lattice, the second-order perturbation to the energy density functional is explicitly formalized.
Furthermore, we work on the density profiles and other bizarre features of the non-spherical nuclei and the pasta phases at the crust-core boundary. Analysing the smooth composition model of the ground state, we also discuss the effects of these defects on vortex pinning.