The study of relatively low density stellar matter in presence of strong quantizing magnetic field Original Research Article

The effect of strong quantizing magnetic field on the equation of state of matter at the outer crust region of magnetars is studied. The density of such matter is low enough compared to the matter density at the inner crust or outer core region. Based on the relativistic version of semi-classical Thomas–Fermi–Dirac model in presence of strong quantizing magnetic field a formalism is developed to investigate this specific problem. The equation of state of such low density crustal matter is obtained by replacing the compressed atoms/ions by Wigner–Seitz cells with nonuniform electron density. The results are compared with other possible scenarios. The appearance of Thomas–Fermi induced electric charge within each Wigner–Seitz cell is also discussed.