Relativistic models of the neutron-star matter equation of state

TL;DR

This paper uses calibrated relativistic models to compute the neutron star matter equation of state, comparing predictions with recent astrophysical measurements, and finds good agreement in pressure but larger radii than observed.

Contribution

It provides a detailed calculation of the neutron star matter equation of state using relativistic models calibrated to recent pressure measurements.

Findings

Models agree with measured pressure of neutron star matter

Predicted radii are larger than observational data

Relativistic models effectively describe the equation of state

Abstract

Motivated by a recent astrophysical measurement of the pressure of cold matter above nuclear-matter saturation density, we compute the equation of state of neutron star matter using accurately calibrated relativistic models. The uniform stellar core is assumed to consist of nucleons and leptons in beta equilibrium; no exotic degrees of freedom are included. We found the predictions of these models to be in fairly good agreement with the measured equation of state. Yet the Mass-vs-Radius relations predicted by these same models display radii that are consistently larger than the observations.