How Well Do We Know The Supernova Equation of State?

Understand

We give an overview about equations of state (EOS) which are currently available for simulations of core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers.

• A few selected important aspects of the EOS, such as the symmetry energy, the maximum mass of neutron stars, and cluster formation, are confronted with constraints from experiments and astrophysical observations.
• There are just very few models which are compatible even with this very restricted set of constraints.
• These remaining models illustrate the uncertainty of the uniform nuclear matter EOS at high densities.