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Session: Cosmology and Relativistic Astrophysics

Name: Dr. Sam Lander (University of East Anglia, Norwich)
Coauthors: Gourgouliatos Konstantinos (University of Patras)
Type: Oral
Title: Breaking a neutron star’s crust
Abstract:

Like any elastic medium, the solid crust of a neutron star has a maximum stress it can withstand before it fails. What happens once this stress is exceeded is not fully understood, but it is believed to lead to the observed activity of magnetars - neutron stars with the strongest known magnetic fields in the Universe. We will discuss efforts to simulate this failure under high magnetic stress through numerical simulations - both with coupled differential equations, and through a cellular automaton model. The applications of the work stretch beyond magnetar activity, however, and may also have implications for the prospects of observing continuous gravitational waves from neutron stars.