Low-energy nuclear physics and global neutron star properties

Abstract

We address the question of the role of low-energy nuclear physics data in constraining neutron star global properties, e.g., masses, radii, angular momentum, and tidal deformability, in the absence of a phase transition in dense matter. To do so, we assess the capacity of 415 relativistic mean field and nonrelativistic Skyrme-type interactions to reproduce the ground state binding energies, the charge radii, and the giant monopole resonances of a set of spherical nuclei. The interactions are classified according to their ability to describe these characteristics, and we show that a tight correlation between the symmetry energy and its slope is obtained provided that $N=Z$ and $N\ensuremath{\ne}Z$ nuclei are described with the same accuracy (mainly driven by the charge radius data). By additionally imposing the constraints from isobaric analog states and neutron skin radius in $^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$, we obtain the following estimates: ${E}_{\mathrm{sym},2}=31.8\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.7$ MeV and ${L}_{\mathrm{sym},2}=58.1\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}9.0$ MeV. We then analyze predictions of neutron star properties and we find that the $1.4{M}_{\ensuremath{\bigodot}}$ neutron star (NS) radius lies between 12 and 14 km for the ``better'' nuclear interactions. We show that (i) the better reproduction of low-energy nuclear physics data by the nuclear models only weakly impacts the global properties of canonical mass neutron stars and (ii) the experimental constraint on the symmetry energy is the most effective one for reducing the uncertainties in NS matter. However, since the density region where constraints are required are well above densities in finite nuclei, the largest uncertainty originates from the density dependence of the energy density functional (EDF), which remains largely unknown.