Matter And Gravitation In Collisions of heavy ions and neutron stars: equation of state

Understand

The gravitational waves emitted from a binary neutron star merger, as predicted from general relativistic magneto-hydrodynamics calculations, are sensitive to the appearance of quark matter and the stiffness of the equation of state of QCD matter present in the inner cores of the stars.

• This is a new messenger observable from outer space, which does provide direct signals for the phase structure of strongly interacting QCD matter at high baryon density and high temperature.
• These astrophysically created extremes of thermodynamics do match, to within 20\%, the values of densities and temperatures which we find in relativistic hydrodynamics and transport theory of heavy ion collisions at the existing laboratories, if though at quite different rapidity windows, impact parameters and bombarding energies of the heavy nuclear systems.
• We demonstrate how one unified equation of state can be constructed and used for both neutron star physics and hot QCD matter excited at laboratory facilities.