Dr. Bhalchandra Pujari

As new observational technologies reveal increasingly detailed properties of neutron star surfaces, the demand for accessible and extensible theoretical modeling tools continues to grow. For the terrestrial matter, the density functional theory (DFT) has been proven to be a reliable workhorse for decades, but its foundations assume the field-free matter and have to be rebuilt completely before it can be poised for the neutron stars. Nonetheless, over the years the efforts have been made to bring the simplicity of the DFT to the extreme conditions of extraterrestrial system. I shall present our real-space implementation of DFT for the material on the surface of the neutron stars. A large part of the colloquium will be spent on addressing the philosophy and construction of the model, followed by some results. I shall discuss the unusual material phases, their electronic structure and the response to the external stimuli. I'll close with where the model currently stops and what is needed for the direct comparison with the observations - much of which will need the input from this community.