On the role of the Vacuum Energy in the Thermodynamics of Neutron Matter

Abstract

The only way neutron matter can couple to the electromagnetic field is through an anomalous coupling, which plays an important role in the thermodynamics of pure neutron matter. Such theories are, however, perturbatively non-renormalisable, which presents a difficulty in terms of the unambiguous treatment of the divergencies. Here we show that despite this, an unambiguous expression can be obtained for the vacuum energy contribution to the grand canonical potential in the case of a constant magnetic field. We find that this contribution is quite small, which justifies the no-sea approximation usually made. We also discuss the density and temperature dependence of the full grand canonical potential.