An Overview of the MUSES Calculation Engine and How It Can Be Used to Describe Neutron Stars

TL;DR

This paper reviews the MUSES Calculation Engine's capabilities in modeling the equations of state for dense matter, crucial for understanding neutron star structures, and explores how different interpolation functions influence these models.

Contribution

It demonstrates the application of the open-source MUSES engine with various modules to model neutron star matter and analyzes the impact of different interpolation functions on stellar structure calculations.

Findings

Different interpolation functions significantly affect the EoS results.

The MUSES engine effectively integrates multiple models for dense matter.

Results highlight uncertainties in neutron star modeling due to EoS variations.

Abstract

For densities beyond nuclear saturation, there is still a large uncertainty in the equations of state (EoS) of dense matter that translate into uncertainties in the internal structure of neutron stars. The MUSES Calculation Engine provides a free and open-source composable workflow management system, which allows users to calculate the EoS of dense and hot matter that can be used, e.g. to describe neutron stars. For this work, we make use of two MUSES EoS modules, Crust Density Functional Theory and Chiral Mean Field model, with beta-equilibrium with leptons enforced in the Lepton module, then connected by the Synthesis module using different functions: hyperbolic tangent, Gaussian, bump, and smoothstep. We then calculate stellar structure using the QLIMR module and discuss how the different interpolating functions affect our results.