Speaker
Prof.
Robert Rutledge
Description
Neutron stars -- the densest objects in the universe -- are supported against gravitational collapse by pressure arising from the
dense matter equation of state (dEOS) -- the pressure as a function of density, at and above nuclear densities. The dEOS arises
from fundamental interactions, and so is of fundamental interest -- in much the same way that the ideal gas law was of interest arising
from atomic gas theory at the dawn of thermodynamics; yet predicting the dEOS is fraught with uncertainty in the physics, as well as in the calculational approximations
necessary to undertake what would otherwise be intractable. But, with a dEOS specified, the mass-radius relationship for neutron stars
can be easily calculated; inversely, in the absence of a dEOS, measurements of the neutron star mass-radius relationship constrain the dEOS.
I will review astrophysical observational results, from X-ray spectroscopy of neutron stars, and point toward how these results can be used to infer the form of the dEOS.
Primary author
Prof.
Robert Rutledge
(McGill University)
