A New Constraint on the Nuclear Equation of State from Statistical Distributions of Compact Remnants of Supernovae

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to constrain the nuclear equation of state at high densities by comparing synthetic supernova remnant populations with observed data, impacting our understanding of neutron stars and black holes.

Contribution

It develops a novel approach using supernova models and observational data to evaluate and constrain candidate nuclear equations of state.

Findings

Certain EOS candidates are favored based on remnant population comparisons.

The method provides a new constraint on the high-temperature nuclear equation of state.

Results impact models of neutron star and black hole formation.

Abstract

Understanding how matter behaves at the highest densities and temperatures is a major open problem in both nuclear physics and relativistic astrophysics. This physics is often encapsulated in the so-called high-temperature nuclear equation of state, which influences compact binary mergers, core-collapse supernovae, and many more phenomena. One such case is the type (either black hole or neutron star) and mass of the remnant of the core collapse of a massive star. For each of six candidate equations of state, we use a very large suite of spherically symmetric supernova models to generate a suite of synthetic populations of such remnants. We then compare these synthetic populations to the observed remnant population. We thus provide a novel constraint on the high-temperature nuclear equation of state and describe which EOS candidates are more or less favored by this metric.