Magnetization of a neutron plasma with Skyrme and Gogny forces in the presence of a strong magnetic field

Some thermodynamical magnitudes of interest in a pure neutron plasma are studied within the framework of the nonrelativistic Hartree-Fock approximation at finite density and temperature. We use Skyrme and Gogny forces to describe such a neutron plasma and study the main differences that arise in these two effective parametrizations of the nuclear interaction when a strong magnetic field induces a permanent magnetization in the gas. The existence of a nonzero permanent spin polarization in a neutron plasma is explored in the density-temperature parameter space. We find that for moderate temperatures and in the low-density range up to densities ≈0.5ρ₀ both parametrizations predict that as density decreases an increasingly strong magnetization is allowed. In the range 0.5ρ₀ρ3ρ₀ there is an approximately constant polarization that can be as big as ≈12% for the maximum allowed interior magnetic field B≈10¹⁸ G. For higher densities there is a dramatic difference in the polarization trend followed by Skyrme an Gogny forces. Although the former predict a ferromagnetic phase transition, the Gogny forces prevent it keeping the magnetization below $5%$.