Transport coefficients of leptons in superconducting neutron star cores

Abstract

I consider the thermal conductivity and shear viscosity of leptons (electrons and muons) in the nucleon neutron star cores where protons are in the superconducting state. I restrict the consideration to the case of not too high temperatures T≲0.35Tcp, where Tcp is the critical temperature of the proton pairing. In this case, lepton collisions with protons can be neglected. Charged lepton collision frequencies are mainly determined by the transverse plasmon exchange and are mediated by the character of the transverse plasma screening. In our previous works [Shternin and Yakovlev, Phys. Rev. D 75, 103004 (2007); Phys. Rev. D 78, 063006 (2008)] the superconducting proton contribution to the transverse screening was considered in the Pippard limit Δ≪ℏqvFp, where Δ is the proton pairing gap, vFp is the proton Fermi velocity, and ℏq is the typical transferred momentum in collisions. However, for large critical temperatures (large Δ) and relatively small densities (small q) the Pippard limit may become invalid. In the present study I show that this is indeed the case and that the older calculations severely underestimated the screening in a certain range of the parameters appropriate to the neutron star cores. As a consequence, the kinetic coefficients at T≪Tcp are found to be smaller than in previous calculations.

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