Astrophysical Quantum Matter: Spinless charged particles on a magnetic dipole sphere

Abstract

We consider the quantum mechanics of a spinless charged particle on a 2-dimensional sphere. When threaded with a magnetic monopole field, this is the well-known Haldane sphere that furnishes a translationally-invariant, incompressible quantum fluid state of a gas of electrons confined to the sphere. This letter presents the results of a novel variant of the Haldane solution where the monopole field is replaced by that of a dipole. We argue that this system is relevant to the physics on the surface of compact astrophysical objects like neutron stars.