On the structure of vortices in the inner crust of neutron stars

We study the structure of vortices and their interaction with nuclei in the inner crust of neutron stars. Vortices carry most of the angular momentum of the crust and according to some models are expected to play a key role in the phenomenon of glitches. The quantities of interest (the energy, the pairing gap, the density and the velocity field) are calculated in the framework of the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) quantum mean field theory. We solve the HFB equations testing four different Skyrme functionals in the particle hole-channel and using a density-dependent contact interaction in the particle-particle channel. We find that the structure of a vortex is strongly affected by the presence of the nucleus, a fact which reflects itself in the density dependence of the pinning energy we calculate.