Neutron pairing with medium polarization beyond the Landau approximation

Abstract

We revisit the long-standing problem of the superfluid transition temperature $T_c$ in dilute neutron matter. It is well known that $T_c$ is strongly affected by medium polarization effects (screening) which modify the pairing interaction in the medium. We study these effects within the random-phase approximation (RPA). It turns out that the widely used Landau approximation is sufficient only at densities below about 0.002 fm$^{-3}$. At higher densities, the full RPA leads to stronger screening than the Landau approximation.