Neutron star observations: Prognosis for equation of state constraints

By J. Lattimer, M. Prakash. 2006

1,113 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract We investigate how current and proposed observations of neutron stars can lead to an understanding of the state of their interiors and the key unknowns: the typical neutron star radius and the neutron star maximum mass. We consider observations made not only with photons, ranging from radio waves to X-rays, but also those involving neutrinos and gravity waves. We detail how precision determinations of structural properties would lead to significant restrictions on the poorly understood equation of state near and beyond the equilibrium density of nuclear matter. To begin, a theoretical analysis of neutron star structure, including general relativistic limits to mass, compactness, and spin rates is made. A review is the made of recent observations such as pulsar timing (which leads to mass, spin period, glitch and moment of inertia estimates), optical and X-ray observations of cooling neutron stars (which lead to estimates of core temperatures and ages and inferences about the internal composition), and X-ray observations of accreting and bursting sources (which shed light on both the crustal properties and internal composition). Next, we discuss neutrino emission from proto-neutron stars and how neutrino observations of a supernova, from both current and planned detectors, might impact our knowledge of the interiors, mass and radii of neutron stars. We also explore the question of how superstrong magnetic fields could affect the equation of state and neutron star structure. This is followed by a look at binary mergers involving neutron stars and how the detection of gravity waves could unambiguously distinguish normal neutron stars from self-bound strange quark matter stars.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/487c9b28cf33b6746834f4b24c4bcf538952ef42

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Citations in the corpus

Thermonuclear Burst Oscillations (2012, background): “A neutron star with a submillisecond spin period would place a tight and very clean constraint on the dense matter equation of state (Lattimer & Prakash 2007, Schaffner-Bielich 2008, Haensel et al. 2009).”
Formation of Double Neutron Star Systems (2017, background): “Finally, DNS systems help to constrain the long-sought-after equation-of-state (EoS) of nuclear matter at high densities (Lattimer & Prakash 2007; Kehl et al. 2016; Özel & Freire 2016), although tighter constraints have so far been obtained from massive NSs with an orbiting white dwarf (WD)…”
Peering into the Dark Side: Magnesium Lines Establish a Massive Neutron Star in PSR J2215+5135 (2018, background): “Since particle interactions in the core provide the pressure necessary to halt its collapse, the maximum mass of a neutron star places independent constraints on how these particles interact (Lattimer & Prakash 2007).”
DELAYED NEUTRINO-DRIVEN SUPERNOVA EXPLOSIONS AIDED BY THE STANDING ACCRETION-SHOCK INSTABILITY (2007, methodology): “In case of the LS-EoS the maximum gravitational mass is 1.84 M⊙, whereas it is 2.21 M⊙ for the HW-EoS, which are both compatible with measured neutron star masses (Lattimer & Prakash 2007).”
Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory: A kilohertz-band gravitational-wave detector in the global network (2020, methodology): “…such as those presented in this section and highlighted with Figure 3 are complementary to those using other methods such as X-ray and radio observations of isolated and accreting neutron stars (see Lattimer & Prakash 2007, for a review) and observations of post-merger remnants (see below).”
Stellar structure models in modified theories of gravity: Lessons and challenges (2019, background): “For some reviews of neutron stars structure and their associated astrophysical and observational properties see [50] and the more recent book [51].”
NUCLEAR CONSTRAINTS ON PROPERTIES OF NEUTRON STAR CRUSTS (2009, methodology): “This constrained range is significantly below the fiducial value of ρt ≈ 0.08 fm−3 often used in the literature and the estimate of 0.5 ρt/ρ0 0.7 made in Lattimer & Prakash (2007) within the thermodynamical approach using the parabolic approximation of the EOS.”
Symmetry Parameter Constraints from a Lower Bound on Neutron-matter Energy (2016, background): “…matter, which is nearly pure neutron matter (PNM) near the saturation density n0;0.16 fm −3, and largely determines neutron-star radii (Lattimer & Prakash 2001) and therefore properties of their crusts, moments of inertia, tidal polarizabilities, and binding energies (Lattimer & Prakash 2007).”
Cooling neutron star in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant: evidence for superfluidity in the core (2010, background): “It is well known that NS cores contain superdense matter whose properties are still uncertain (see, e.g., Haensel, Potekhin & Yakovlev 2007; Lattimer & Prakash 2007).”
From hadrons to quarks in neutron stars: a review (2017, background): “[87, 88]; see [89] for a general summary of equations of state).”
Two-Dimensional Multiangle, Multigroup Neutrino Radiation-Hydrodynamic Simulations of Postbounce Supernova Cores (2008, background): “…progenitor characteristics that set the postbounce rate of mass accretion onto the PNS, a successful supernova explosion should occur within∼1–1.5 s after bounce to match observational and theoretical neutron star upper mass limits around∼2–2.5 M⊙ (Lattimer & Prakash 2007, and references therein).”
THE COSMIC CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVA RATE DOES NOT MATCH THE MASSIVE-STAR FORMATION RATE (2011, background): “…densities and temperatures reached in CC SNe offer the opportunity to study the physics of weakly interacting particles, formation of compact objects, and related nuclear physics (see, e.g., Raffelt 1990, 2000; Kotake et al. 2006; Janka et al. 2007; Lattimer & Prakash 2007, for recent reviews).”
Combined Constraints on the Equation of State of Dense Neutron-rich Matter from Terrestrial Nuclear Experiments and Observations of Neutron Stars (2018, methodology): “In the present study, we employ the thermodynamical approach (Kubis 2004, 2007; Lattimer & Prakash 2007) to estimate the crust-core transition point where the uniform matter becomes unstable against being separated into a mixture of single nucleons and their clusters.”