Low-Mass Neutron Stars and the Equation of State of Dense Matter

By J. Carriere, C. Horowitz, J. Piekarewicz. 2002

168 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Neutron star radii provide useful information about the equation of state of neutron-rich matter. Particularly interesting is the density dependence of the equation of state (EOS). For example, the softening of the EOS at high density, where the pressure rises slower than anticipated, could signal a transition to an exotic phase. However, extracting the density dependence of the EOS requires measuring the radii of neutron stars for a broad range of masses. A "normal" 1.4 M☉ (M☉ = solar mass) neutron star has a central density of a few times the nuclear-matter saturation density (ρ0). In contrast, low-mass (≃0.5 M☉) neutron stars have central densities near ρ0, so their radii provide information about the EOS at low density. Unfortunately, low-mass neutron stars are rare because they may be hard to form. Instead, a precision measurement of nuclear radii of atomic nuclei may contain similar information. Indeed, we find a strong correlation between the neutron radius of 208Pb and the radius of a 0.5 M☉ neutron star. Thus, the radius of a 0.5 M☉ neutron star can be inferred from a measurement of the neutron radius of 208Pb. Comparing this value to the measured radius of a ≃1.4 M☉ neutron star should provide the strongest constraint to date on the density dependence of the EOS.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/054ba97c21bb5574a95fdfd020d04ff31d7c3961

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Citations in the corpus

Stellar structure models in modified theories of gravity: Lessons and challenges (2019, background): “[477] shows that for the parameter |ǫ| & 5 × 106 m2 one needs to go to the 3rd order of ∆E in order to consider the convergence rate of the expansion on mass and compactness, finding that for a slight dependence on the EOS, the 66”
NUCLEAR CONSTRAINTS ON PROPERTIES OF NEUTRON STAR CRUSTS (2009, methodology): “In the inner crust of densities between ρout and ρt where the nuclear pastas may exist, because of our poor knowledge about its EOS from first principles, following Carriere et al. (2003), we construct its EOS according to P = a + b 4/3.”
Born–Infeld inspired modifications of gravity (2017, background): “5M⊙ are strongly correlated with the neutron skin thickness33 of 208Pb nuclei in a way which is independent of the particular equation of state [101].”