Towards a better understanding of the symmetry energy within neutron stars

Understand

The LIGO-Virgo collaboration ground-breaking detection of the binary neutron-star merger event, GW170817, has expanded efforts to understand the Equation of State (EoS) of nuclear matter.

• These measurements provide new constraints on the overall pressure, but do not, by itself, elucidate its microscopic origins, including the pressure arising from the symmetry energy, that governs much of the internal structure of a neutron star.
• To correlate microscopic constraints from nuclear measurements to the GW170817 constraints, we calculate neutron star properties with more than 200 Skyrme energy density functionals that describe properties of nuclei.
• Calculated neutron-star radii (R) and the tidal deformabilities which show a strong correlation with pressure at twice saturation density.