# The Golden Era of Neutron Stars: from Hadrons to Quarks

## TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in understanding neutron star interiors, highlighting observational and theoretical progress in identifying the transition from hadronic matter to quark matter within these dense objects.

## Contribution

It introduces the modern quark-hadron crossover equation of state, QHC18, and discusses how recent observations support models of neutron stars containing deconfined quark matter.

## Key findings

- Neutron star masses around 2.0 solar masses confirmed.
- Simultaneous mass and radius measurements are improving.
- GW170817 provided crucial gravitational wave data.

## Abstract

Neutron stars were first posited in the early thirties, and discovered as pulsars in late sixties; however, only recently are we beginning to understand the matter they contain. This talk describes the continuing development of a consistent picture of the liquid interiors of neutron stars, driven by four advances: observations of two heavy neutron stars with masses $\simeq$ 2.0 solar masses; inferences of masses and radii simultaneously for an increasing number of neutron stars in low mass X-ray binaries, and future determinations via the NICER observatory; the observation of the binary neutron star merger, GW170817, through gravitational waves as well as across the electromagnetic spectrum; and an emerging understanding in QCD of how nuclear matter can turn into deconfined quark matter in the interior. We describe the modern quark-hadron crossover equation of state, QHC18, and the corresponding neutron stars, which agree well with current observations.