Neutron reactions in accreting neutron stars: a new pathway to efficient crust heating.

In our calculation of neutron star crust heating we include several key new model features. In earlier work electron capture (EC) only allowed neutron emission from the daughter ground state; here we calculate, in a deformed quasi-random-phase approximation (QRPA) model, EC decay rates to all states in the daughter that are allowed by Gamow-Teller selection rules and energetics. The subsequent branching ratios between the 1n,...,xn channels and the competing gamma decay are calculated in a Hauser-Feshbach model. In our multicomponent plasma model a single (EC, xn) reaction step can produce several neutron-deficient nuclei, each of which can further decay by (EC, xn). Hence, the neutron emission occurs more continuously with increasing depth as compared to that in a one-component plasma model.