Nucleonic metamodelling in light of multimessenger, PREX-II and CREX data

TL;DR

This paper uses Bayesian analysis to explore how nuclear models reconcile diverse data from multimessenger astrophysics and experiments, focusing on the density dependence of nuclear matter and the tension between different measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a semi-agnostic modeling approach to analyze neutron star and nuclear properties, addressing discrepancies in experimental and observational data.

Findings

High order empirical parameters influence density regimes

Decoupling surface and bulk properties reduces data tension

Surface behavior assumptions affect model consistency

Abstract

The need of reconciling our understanding of the behavior of hadronic matter across a wide range of densities, especially at the time when data from multimessenger observations and novel experimental facilities are flooding in, has provided new challenges to the nuclear models. Particularly, the density dependence of the isovector channel of the nuclear energy functionals seems hard to pin down if experiments like PREX-II (or PREX) and CREX are required to be taken on the same footing. We put to test this anomaly in a semi-agnostic modelling technique, by performing a full Bayesian analysis of static properties of neutron stars, together with global properties of nuclei as binding energy, charge radii and neutron skin calculated at the semi-classical level. Our results show that the interplay between bulk and surface properties, and the importance of high order empirical parameters that effectively decouple the subsaturation and the supersaturation density regime, might partially explain the tension between the different measurements and observations. If the surface behaviors, however, are decoupled from the bulk properties, we found a rather harmonious situation among experimental and observational data.