An accurate metric for the spacetime around neutron stars

Understand

The problem of having an accurate description of the spacetime around neutron stars is of great astrophysical interest.

• For astrophysical applications, one needs to have a metric that captures all the properties of the spacetime around a neutron star.
• Furthermore, an accurate appropriately parameterised metric, i.e., a metric that is given in terms of parameters that are directly related to the physical structure of the neutron star, could be used to solve the inverse problem, which is to infer the properties of the structure of a neutron star from astrophysical observations.
• In this work we present such an approximate stationary and axisymmetric metric for the exterior of neutron stars, which is constructed using the Ernst formalism and is parameterised by the relativistic multipole moments of the central object.