Nuclear matter and its role in supernovae, neutron stars and compact object binary mergers

By J. Lattimer, M. Prakash. 2000

204 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The equation of state (EOS) of dense matter plays an important role in the supernova phenomenon, the structure of neutron stars, and in the mergers of compact objects (neutron stars and black holes). During the collapse phase of a supernova, the EOS at subnuclear densities controls the collapse rate, the amount of deleptonization and thus the size of the collapsing core and the bounce density. Properties of nuclear matter that are especially crucial are the symmetry energy and the nuclear specific heat. The nuclear incompressibility, and the supernuclear EOS, play supporting roles. In a similar way, although the maximum masses of neutron stars are entirely dependent upon the supernuclear EOS, other important structural aspects are more sensitive to the equation of state at nuclear densities. The radii, moments of inertia, and the relative binding energies of neutron stars are, in particular, sensitive to the behavior of the nuclear symmetry energy. The dependence of the radius of a neutron star on its mass is shown to critically influence the outcome of the compact merger of two neutron stars or a neutron star with a small mass black hole. This latter topic is especially relevant to this volume, since it stems from research prompted by the tutoring of David Schramm a quarter century ago.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atmospheric Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4a1580ecd65b2577186680623d92e8330f2f4409

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Nai-Bo Zhang
2. Bao-An Li
3. Jun Xu
4. G. Fiorella Burgio
5. Marc A. Baldo
6. Lie-Wen Chen
7. Hong-ru Ma
8. J. Lattimer

In Atmospheric Science

1. Bao-An Li
2. Jun Xu
3. Nai-Bo Zhang

Citations in the corpus

• The Nuclear Symmetry Energy (2016, background): “[111] it was indeed shown that, for the parametrized PAL EOS [112], the variation of the value of the symmetry energy at saturation alters the NS radius, especially for NS of smaller mass.”
• NUCLEAR CONSTRAINTS ON PROPERTIES OF NEUTRON STAR CRUSTS (2009, background): “While ρout is relatively well determined to be ρout ≈ 4 × 1011 g cm−3 (Ruster et al. 2006; Hempel & Schaffner-Bielich 2008), the transition density ρt is still very uncertain (Lattimer & Prakash 2000, 2001, 2007).”
• Combined Constraints on the Equation of State of Dense Neutron-rich Matter from Terrestrial Nuclear Experiments and Observations of Neutron Stars (2018, background): “…mass and radius, it plays an important role in various astrophysical phenomena (Baym et al. 1971,b; Pethick & Ravenhall 1995; Link et al. 1999; Lattimer & Prakash 2000, 2001; Steiner et al. 2005; Lattimer & Prakash 2007; Chamel & Haensel 2008; Sotani et al. 2012; Newton et al. 2013; Pons et…”