Ed Brown -- Nuclear Astrophysics in the Neutron Star Crust

Ed reviewed the entire crustal nuclear processes theory, showing the ability of analytic models to explain even more detailed theoretical predictions for the processes which take place in the crusts of neutron stars.

• Brown and Cumming
  
• Cooper, Steiner and Brown
  

One of the important conclusions of this work is that the final quiescent luminosity of the qLMXB, following thermal relaxation of the crust, is related to the temperature of the core, and the theoretical uncertainty is due to uncertainty in the composition of the crust (iron? or solar metalicity?), but this is only about a factor of two in temperature. Thus, the quiescent luminosities tell us the temperature of the neutron star core. Of course, if you know how much energy is deposited in the crust, and the heat capacity of the core, you can then calculate the neutrino losses in the neutron star.