Revisiting the maximum mass of differentially rotating neutron stars in general relativity: \"Ubermassive stars with realistic equations of state

Understand

We study the solution space of general relativistic, axisymmetric, equilibria of differentially rotating neutron stars with realistic, nuclear equations of state.

• We find that different types of stars, which were identified by earlier works for polytropic equations of state, arise for realistic equations of state, too.
• Scanning the solution space for the sample of realistic equations of state we treat, we find lower limits on the maximum rest masses supported by cold, differentially rotating stars for each type of stars.
• We often discover equilibrium configurations that can support more than 2 times the mass of a static star.