Thermal Fluctuations In Nuclear Pasta

Despite their astrophysical relevance, nuclear pasta phases are relatively unstudied at high temperatures. We present molecular dynamics simulations of symmetric nuclear matter with several topologies of "lasagna" at a range of temperatures to study the pasta-uniform transition. Using the Minkowski functionals, we quantify trends in the occupied volume, surface area, mean breadth, and Euler characteristic. The amplitude of surface displacements of the pasta increase with temperature which produce short-lived topological defects such as holes and filaments near melting, resulting in power laws for increasing surface curvature with temperature. We calculate the static structure factor and report the shear viscosity and thermal conductivity of pasta, finding that the shear viscosity is minimized at the melting temperature. These results may have implications for the thermoelastic properties of nuclear pasta and finite-temperature corrections to the equation of state at pasta densities.