Entrainment coefficient and effective mass for conduction neutrons in neutron star crust: II Macroscopic treatment

Phenomena such as pulsar frequency glitches are believed to be explicable in terms of a differentially rotating current of “free” superfluid neutrons at densities above the “drip” threshold in the (ionic) solid crust of a neutron star. In the preceding article of this series a microscopic quantum mechanical analysis was used to predict that the relative motion of the neutron current will be characterised by a density dependent effective mass m⋆ that can become extremely large compared with the ordinary neutron mass m in the middle layers of the crust. In the present article it is shown how this information can be taken into account in the explicit formulation of the equations of state needed for application to the crust of the variational two constituent fluid formalism developed in earlier work for the purpose of describing the mechanical behaviour of the star at a macroscopic level. 1 Two constituent description of inner crust 1.