The Nuclear Equation of State and Neutron Star Masses

By J. Lattimer. 2012

747 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Neutron stars are valuable laboratories for the study of dense matter. Recent observations have uncovered both massive and low-mass neutron stars and have also set constraints on neutron star radii. The largest mass measurements are powerfully influencing the high-density equation of state because of the existence of the neutron star maximum mass. The smallest mass measurements, and the distributions of masses, have implications for the progenitors and formation mechanisms of neutron stars. The ensemble of mass and radius observations can realistically restrict the properties of dense matter and, in particular, the behavior of the nuclear symmetry energy near the nuclear saturation density. Simultaneously, various nuclear experiments are progressively restricting the ranges of parameters describing the symmetry properties of the nuclear equation of state. In addition, new theoretical studies of pure neutron matter are providing insights. These observational, experimental, and theoretical constraints of dense matter, when combined, are now revealing a remarkable convergence.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ac1cfba1ce7aa683be79fa9143b47a4b8840a4e6

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Citations in the corpus

A simple approach to the supernova progenitor–explosion connection (2016, background): “This would bring the low-mass peak more in line with observations, but increase the tension between the predictions and the observed neutron star mass distribution (Schwab et al. 2010; Lattimer 2012) at the high-mass end.”
Neutron star mass and radius measurements from atmospheric model fits to X-ray burst cooling tail spectra (2017, background): “The masses and radii of neutron stars (NSs) encode valuable information about the properties of the matter in their cores (Lattimer 2012; Lattimer & Steiner 2014), which reaches several times nuclear saturation density and has strong isospin asymmetry, and which therefore cannot be analyzed in…”
Stellar structure models in modified theories of gravity: Lessons and challenges (2019, background): “Typically, it is also demanded that in these piecewise EOS there is a smooth transition from a high-density regime to the low-density one, namely, that at low densities it recovers the well known EOS of neutron star crust [206].”
A detached stellar-mass black hole candidate in the globular cluster NGC 3201 (2018, background): “In the literature, neutron star binaries show a narrow mass distribution of (1.35 ± 0.04)M per star (Thorsett & Chakrabarty 1999; Lattimer 2012).”
Nuclear equation of state from ground and collective excited state properties of nuclei (2018, background): “S) describes the energy per nucleon as a function of the neutron (ˆn)andproton(ˆp)densitiesofanuniformandinﬁnitesystematzerotemperaturethatinteractonly 2 viatheresidualstronginteraction,ornuclearforce[1,2,3]. Beingthenuclearforceofshort-range(of the order of the fm), the energy per nucleon (of the o”
Comprehensive nucleosynthesis analysis for ejecta of compact binary mergers (2014, methodology): “The merger models chosen here are not the most typical cases concerning what is expected from observations of NS–NS binaries (e.g. Lattimer 2012) and binary population models of NS–NS and NS–BH systems (e.g. Dominik et al. 2012).”
EARLY X-RAY AND OPTICAL AFTERGLOW OF GRAVITATIONAL WAVE BURSTS FROM MERGERS OF BINARY NEUTRON STARS (2012, background): “The first is along the line of the observations of NSs and NSNS binaries in the Galaxy (e.g. Lattimer (2012) for a review).”