Swelling of nuclei embedded in neutron-gas and consequences for fusion

Fusion of very neutron rich nuclei may be important to determine the composition and heating of the crust of accreting neutron stars. We present an exploratory study of the effect of the neutron-gas environment on the structure of nuclei and the consequences for pycnonuclear fusion cross sections in the neutron drip region. We studied the formation and properties of oxygen and calcium isotopes embedded in varying neutron-gas densities. We observe that the formed isotope is the drip-line nucleus for the given effective interaction. Increasing the neutron-gas density leads to the swelling of the nuclear density. We have used these densities to study the effect of this swelling on the fusion cross sections using the São Paulo potential. At high neutron-gas densities the cross section is substantially increased but at lower densities the modification is minimal.