Spectral Representations of Neutron-Star Equations of State

TL;DR

This paper develops spectral methods to accurately and efficiently represent neutron-star equations of state, ensuring physical validity and minimal complexity for modeling neutron star properties.

Contribution

It introduces a faithful spectral representation framework for neutron-star equations of state that guarantees physical stability and requires few coefficients for accurate modeling.

Findings

Spectral representations are faithful and satisfy thermodynamic stability.

Few spectral coefficients suffice for accurate neutron-star EOS modeling.

Spectral fits successfully approximate a wide range of realistic EOS.

Abstract

Methods are developed for constructing spectral representations of cold (barotropic) neutron-star equations of state. These representations are faithful in the sense that every physical equation of state has a representation of this type, and conversely every such representation satisfies the minimal thermodynamic stability criteria required of any physical equation of state. These spectral representations are also efficient, in the sense that only a few spectral coefficients are generally required to represent neutron-star equations of state quiet accurately. This accuracy and efficiency is illustrated by constructing spectral fits to a large collection of "realistic" neutron-star equations of state.