The composition of the inner crust of neutron stars is usually studied using phenomenological interactions such as Skyrme energy-density functionals. But most of these functionals do not agree well with ab-initio calculations of very dilute neutron matter. In this work, we study the inner crust of neutron stars in the model of phase coexistence of dense neutron-rich nuclear clusters and dilute neutron gas, and we investigate how employing a realistic microscopic equation of state to the neutron gas alters the composition. Our results indicate that with a functional that reproduces the correct equation of state of neutron matter at moderate densities, one can obtain a good description of the crust even if the functional does not have the correct behavior at extremely low density.
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Gupta et al. (2024) studied this question.
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