Isospin asymmetric nuclear matter and properties of axisymmetric neutron stars

TL;DR

This paper uses a specific effective interaction to derive an equation of state that successfully models high-mass neutron stars, matching observed masses of some of the most massive known pulsars.

Contribution

It presents a systematic study of neutron star properties using the DDM3Y effective interaction, extending the equation of state to describe neutron stars above 1.6 solar masses.

Findings

Successfully models neutron stars up to 2.1 solar masses

Matches observed masses of PSR B1516+02B and PSR J0751+1807

Provides a unified description of nuclear matter properties

Abstract

Pure hadronic compact stars, above a limiting value ($\approx$1.6 M$_\odot$) of their gravitational masses, to which predictions of most of other equations of state (EoSs) are restricted, can be reached from the equation of state (EoS) obtained using DDM3Y effective interaction. This effective interaction is found to be quite successful in providing unified description of elastic and inelastic scattering, various radioactivities and nuclear matter properties. We present a systematic study of the properties of pure hadronic compact stars. The $\beta$-equilibrated neutron star matter using this EoS with a thin crust is able to describe highly-massive compact stars, such as PSR B1516+02B with a mass M=1.94$^{+0.17}_{-0.19}$ M$_\odot$ and PSR J0751+1807 with a mass M=2.1$\pm$0.2 M$_\odot$ to a 1$\sigma$ confidence level.