Abstract
How does subatomic matter organize itself? Neutron stars are cosmic laboratories uniquely poised to answer this fundamental question that lies at the heart of nuclear science. Newly commissioned rare isotope facilities, telescopes operating across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and ever more sensitive gravitational wave detectors will probe the properties of neutron-rich matter with unprecedented precision over an enormous range of densities. A coordinated effort between observation, experiment, and theoretical research is of paramount importance for realizing the full potential of these investments. Theoretical nuclear physics provides valuable insights into the properties of neutron-rich matter in regimes that are not presently accessible to experiment or observation. In particular, nuclear density functional theory is likely the only tractable framework that can bridge the entire nuclear landscape by connecting finite nuclei to neutron stars. This compelling connection is the main scope of the present review.
Highlights
The HK theorems establish a remarkable and subtle result: The exact ground-state energy of the complicated many-body system may be obtained from minimizing a suitable EDF that only depends on the one-body density
In the context of nuclear physics, it is well known that a Hartree potential computed from the convolution of the bare nucleon–nucleon interaction with the nuclear density provides a poor description of the properties of atomic nuclei [16]
The direct detection of gravitational waves from the binary neutron star merger GW170817 suggests that neutron stars are fairly compact, implying a relatively soft equation of state (EoS) at intermediate densities [38]
Summary
In the context of nuclear physics, it is well known that a Hartree potential computed from the convolution of the bare nucleon–nucleon interaction with the nuclear density provides a poor description of the properties of atomic nuclei [16]. To overcome this problem, effective density-dependent forces were developed by Skyrme [17, 18] almost a decade before the inception of DFT. Such adjustments can be done routinely because the calibration of the EDF produces a statistically robust covariant matrix
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