Relativistic models of the neutron-star matter equation of state

Abstract

Motivated by a recent astrophysical measurement of the pressure of cold matter above nuclear-matter saturation density, we compute the equation of state of neutron star matter using accurately calibrated relativistic models. The uniform stellar core is assumed to consist of nucleons and leptons in beta equilibrium; no exotic degrees of freedom are included. We found the predictions of these models to be in fairly good agreement with the measured equation of state. Yet the Mass-vs-Radius relations predicted by these same models display radii that are consistently larger than the observations.