Relativistic mean-field theory applied to the study of neutron star properties

Understand

Nuclear physics can be applied in various ways to the study of neutron stars.

• This thesis reports on one such application, where the relativistic mean-field approximation has been employed to calculate the equations of state of matter in the neutron star interior.
• In particular the equations of state of nuclear and neutron star matter of the NL3, PK1 and FSUGold parameter sets were derived.
• A survey of available literature on neutron stars is presented and we use the derived equations of state to reproduce the properties of saturated nuclear matter as well as the mass-radius relationship of a static, spherical symmetric neutron star.