Neutron Star Matter as a Relativistic Fermi Liquid

TL;DR

This paper models neutron star matter as a relativistic Fermi liquid using Landau theory, incorporating microscopic chiral nucleon-meson interactions, to better understand its equation of state and phase behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a Fermi-liquid framework for neutron star matter based on a microscopic chiral nucleon-meson theory with nonperturbative methods, extending the understanding of dense nuclear matter.

Findings

Fermi-liquid description is justified at neutron star core densities.

Leading Landau parameters are derived and analyzed.

Transition to chiral symmetry restoration occurs at higher densities than typical neutron star cores.

Abstract

The equation of state (EoS) of neutron star matter, constrained by the existence of two-solar-mass stars and gravitational wave signals from neutron star mergers, is analysed using the Landau theory of relativistic Fermi liquids. While the phase diagram of dense and cold QCD matter is still open for scenarios ranging from hadronic to quark matter in the center of neutron stars, a Fermi-liquid treatment is motivated by a microscopic approach starting from a chiral nucleon-meson field theory combined with nonperturbative functional renormalization group methods. In this scheme effects of multipionic fluctuations and repulsive nuclear many-body correlations suggest that the transition to chiral symmetry restoration is shifted to densities above those typically encountered in the neutron star core. Under such conditions a Fermi-liquid description in terms of nucleon quasiparticles appears to be justified. The leading Landau parameters are derived and discussed. Our results are contrasted with a well-known Fermi liquid, namely liquid $^3$He.