Alex Deibel

TL;DR: It is reported that cycles of electron capture and its inverse, β− decay, involving neutron-rich nuclei at a typical depth of about 150 metres, cool the outer neutron star crust by emitting neutrinos while also thermally decoupling the surface layers from the deeper crust.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the accreting neutron star transient MAXI J0556-332, which is the hottest transient, at the start of quiescence, observed to date.

TL;DR: A review of the current understanding of the nuclear physics of the outer layers of accreting neutron stars can be found in this article, where the existence of the neutron star crust is discussed.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify typical nuclear reaction sequences down to a depth in the inner crust where the mass density is using a full nuclear reaction network for a range of initial compositions and find that nuclear heating is relatively robust and independent of initial composition, while cooling via nuclear Urca cycles in the outer crust depends strongly on initial composition.

TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that the late time cooling of MXB 1659-29 is consistent with heat release from a normal neutron layer near the crust-core boundary with a long thermal time.