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The Breaking Strain of Neutron Star Crust and Gravitational Waves

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arxiv 0904.1986 v1 pith:T7WJI72I submitted 2009-04-13 astro-ph.SR astro-ph.HEcond-mat.mtrl-scigr-qcnucl-th

classification astro-ph.SRastro-ph.HEcond-mat.mtrl-scigr-qcnucl-th
keywords crustneutronbreakingstarstraingravitationallargemountains
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Mountains on rapidly rotating neutron stars efficiently radiate gravitational waves. The maximum possible size of these mountains depends on the breaking strain of neutron star crust. With multi-million ion molecular dynamics simulations of Coulomb solids representing the crust, we show that the breaking strain of pure single crystals is very large and that impurities, defects, and grain boundaries only modestly reduce the breaking strain to around 0.1. Due to the collective behavior of the ions during failure found in our simulations, the neutron star crust is likely very strong and can support mountains large enough so that their gravitational wave radiation could limit the spin periods of some stars and might be detectable in large scale interferometers. Furthermore, our microscopic modeling of neutron star crust material can help analyze mechanisms relevant in magnetar giant and micro flares.

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Cited by 4 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Assessing the Impact of Instrumental Requirements on the Scientific Performance of the Einstein Telescope

    astro-ph.IM 2026-07 accept novelty 6.0 of 10

    Degrading the Einstein Telescope's sensitivity in specific frequency bands hurts different science goals in predictable ways, but the mission remains scientifically strong even in the worst modelled cases.

  2. Crust glass formation reveals the neutron star birth properties in IGR J17480-2446

    astro-ph.HE 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    Accretion-induced failure of the neutron star crystal crust produces a glass layer that explains the observed cooling, fixes the accreted mass at 2.4e-6 solar masses, and indicates birth properties typical of recycled...

  3. Magnetized neutron stars: perturbative versus fully-numerical approaches

    astro-ph.HE 2026-05 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    Direct comparison of Konno-99 perturbative and LORENE numerical methods for poloidal magnetized neutron stars shows perturbative validity for observed fields up to ~10^16 G and numerical resolution limits below ~10^10 G.

  4. Science Case for the Einstein Telescope

    astro-ph.CO 2019-12 unverdicted novelty 3.0 of 10

    The Einstein Telescope will enable gravitational-wave observations up to cosmological distances, opening avenues for discoveries in astrophysics, cosmology, and fundamental physics.

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