No Arabic abstract
This is an introduction to the tabulated data base of stellar matter properties calculated within the framework of the Statistical Model for Supernova Matter (SMSM). The tables present thermodynamical characteristics and nuclear abundances for 31 values of baryon density (10$^{-8}<rho/rho_0<$0.32, $rho_0$=0.15 fm$^{-3}$ is the normal nuclear matter density), 35 values of temperature ($0.2<T<25$ MeV) and 28 values of electron-to-baryon ratio ($0.02<Y_e<0.56$). The properties of stellar matter in $beta$-equilibrium are also considered. The main ingredients of the SMSM are briefly outlined, and the data structure and content of the tables are explained.
We compare three different statistical models for the equation of state (EOS) of stellar matter at subnuclear densities and temperatures (0.5-10 MeV) expected to occur during the collapse of massive stars and supernova explosions. The models introduce the distributions of various nuclear species in nuclear statistical equilibrium, but use somewhat different nuclear physics inputs. It is demonstrated that the basic thermodynamical quantities of stellar matter under these conditions are similar, except in the region of high densities and low temperatures. We demonstrate that mass and isotopic distributions have considerable differences related to the different assumptions of the models on properties of nuclei at these stellar conditions. Overall, the three models give similar trends, but the details reflect the uncertainties related to the modeling of medium effects, such as the temperature and density dependence of surface and bulk energies of heavy nuclei, and the nuclear shell structure effects. We discuss importance of new physics inputs for astrophysical calculations from experimental data obtained in intermediate energy heavy-ion collisions, in particular, the similarities of the conditions reached during supernova explosions and multifragmentation reactions.
The half-skyrmions that appear in dense baryonic matter when skyrmions are put on crystals modify drastically hadron properties in dense medium and affect strongly the nuclear tensor forces, thereby influencing the equation of state (EoS) of dense nuclear and asymmetric nuclear matter. The matter comprised of half skyrmions has vanishing quark condensate but non-vanishing pion decay constant and could be interpreted as a hadronic dual of strong-coupled quark matter. We infer from this observation combined with certain predictions of hidden local symmetry in low-energy hadronic interactionsa a set of new scaling laws -- called new-BR -- for the parameters in nuclear effective field theory controlled by renormalization-group flow. They are subjected to the EoS of symmetric and asymmetric nuclear matter, and are then applied to nuclear symmetry energies and properties of compact stars. The changeover from the skyrmion matter to a half-skyrmion matter that takes place after the cross-over density $n_{1/2}$ provides a simple and natural field theoretic explanation for the change of the EoS from soft to stiff at a density above that of nuclear matter required for compact stars as massive as $sim 2.4M_odot$. Cross-over density in the range $1.5n_0 lsim n_{1/2} lsim 2.0 n_0$ has been employed, and the possible skyrmion half-skyrmion coexistence {or cross-over} near $n_{1/2}$ is discussed. The novel structure of {the tensor forces and} the EoS obtained with the new-BR scaling is relevant for neutron-rich nuclei and compact star matter and could be studied in RIB (rare isotope beam) machines.
We perform statistically rigorous uncertainty quantification (UQ) for chiral effective field theory ($chi$EFT) applied to infinite nuclear matter up to twice nuclear saturation density. The equation of state (EOS) is based on high-order many-body perturbation theory calculations with nucleon-nucleon and three-nucleon interactions up to fourth order in the $chi$EFT expansion. From these calculations our newly developed Bayesian machine-learning approach extracts the size and smoothness properties of the correlated EFT truncation error. We then propose a novel extension that uses multitask machine learning to reveal correlations between the EOS at different proton fractions. The inferred in-medium $chi$EFT breakdown scale in pure neutron matter and symmetric nuclear matter is consistent with that from free-space nucleon-nucleon scattering. These significant advances allow us to provide posterior distributions for the nuclear saturation point and propagate theoretical uncertainties to derived quantities: the pressure and incompressibility of symmetric nuclear matter, the nuclear symmetry energy, and its derivative. Our results, which are validated by statistical diagnostics, demonstrate that an understanding of truncation-error correlations between different densities and different observables is crucial for reliable UQ. The methods developed here are publicly available as annotated Jupyter notebooks.
We present an extension of a previous work where, assuming a simple free bosonic gas supplemented with a relativistic meand field model to describe the pure nucleonic part of the EoS, we studied the consequences that the first non-trivial hexaquark $d^*$(2380) could have on the properties of neutron stars. Compared to that exploratory work we employ a standard non-linear Walecka model including additional terms that describe the interaction of the $d^*(2380)$ di-baryon with the other particles of the system through the exchange of $sigma$- and $omega$-meson fields. Our results have show that the presence of the $d^*(2380)$ leads to maximum masses compatible with the recent observations of $sim 2$M$_odot$ millisecond pulsars if the interaction of the $d^*(2380)$ is slightly repulsive or the $d^*(2380)$ does not interacts at all. An attractive interaction makes the equation of state too soft to be able to support a $2$M$_odot$ neutron star whereas an extremely repulsive one induces the collapse of the neutron star into a black hole as soon as the $d^*(2380)$ appears.
A central issue in the theory of astrophysical compact objects and heavy ion reactions at intermediate and relativistic energies is the Nuclear Equation of State (EoS). On one hand, the large and expanding set of experimental and observational data is expected to constrain the behaviour of the nuclear EoS, especially at density above saturation, where it is directly linked to fundamental processes which can occur in dense matter. On the other hand, theoretical predictions for the EoS at high density can be challenged by the phenomenological findings. In this topical review paper we present the many-body theory of nuclear matter as developed along different years and with different methods. Only nucleonic degrees of freedom are considered. We compare the different methods at formal level, as well as the final EoS calculated within each one of the considered many-body schemes. The outcome of this analysis should help in restricting the uncertainty of the theoretical predictions for the nuclear EoS.