Impact of large-mass constraints on the properties of neutron stars

Understand

The maximum mass of a nonrotating neutron star, $M_{\rm TOV}$, plays a very important role in deciphering the structure and composition of neutron stars and in revealing the equation of state (EOS) of nuclear matter.

• Although with a large-error bar, the recent mass estimate for the black-widow binary pulsar PSR J0952-0607, i.e.
• $M=2.35\pm0.17~M_\odot$, provides the strongest lower bound on $M_{\rm TOV}$ and suggests that neutron stars with very large masses can in principle be observed.
• Adopting an agnostic modelling of the EOS, we study the impact that large masses have on the neutron-star properties.