Asymmetric nuclear matter : a variational approach

TL;DR

This paper presents a self-consistent variational method to analyze the properties of cold asymmetric nuclear matter, incorporating pion pairs and meson interactions, and applies it to neutron star modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a novel self-consistent variational approach that includes pion pairing and meson interactions to study asymmetric nuclear matter.

Findings

Calculated saturation properties like binding energy, pressure, and symmetry energy.

Derived the equation of state for nuclear matter.

Applied the model to neutron star mass-radius predictions.

Abstract

We discuss here a self-consistent method to calculate the properties of the cold asymmetric nuclear matter. In this model, the nuclear matter is dressed with s-wave pion pairs and the nucleon-nucleon (N-N) interaction is mediated by these pion pairs, $\omega$ and $\rho$ mesons. The parameters of these interactions are calculated self-consistently to obtain the saturation properties like equilibrium binding energy, pressure, compressibility and symmetry energy. The computed equation of state is then used in the Tolman- Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) equation to study the mass and radius of a neutron star in the pure neutron matter limit.