ITC Special Seminar - Jim Lattimer (Stonybrook)

Taking the Measure of Neutron Stars

 

Neutron stars are laboratories for understanding physics under extremeconditions, including the nature of the nucleon-nucleon interactionand the equation of state of dense matter and the location of thequark-hadron transition.  One of the most important discoveries of thelast few years has been the discovery of neutron stars in the vicinityof 2 solar masses. Coupled with the assumptions that generalrelativity and causality are valid, the near-certainty that neutronstars have crusts, nuclear structure measurements, and recenttheoretical advances in the understanding of pure neutron matter,reasonably tight constraints on neutron star have been achieved.  Thisincludes significant bounds on their radii, moments of inertia,binding energies and tidal deformabilities.  In parallel, there havealso been advances in using X-ray observations to confront thesebounds.  Additional measurements in X-rays, radio, neutrinos, andgravitational waves are on the near horizon.