Abstract
We report a quantum Monte Carlo calculation of the equation of state of symmetric nuclear matter using local interactions derived from chiral effective field theory up to next-to-next-to-leading order fit to few-body observables only. The empirical saturation density and energy are well reproduced within statistical and systematic uncertainties. We have also derived the symmetry energy as a function of the density, finding good agreement with available experimentally derived constraints at saturation and twice saturation density. We find that the corresponding pressure is also in excellent agreement with recent constraints extracted from gravitational waves of the neutron-star merger GW170817 by the LIGO-Virgo detection.
Highlights
The nuclear equation of state (EOS) is of great interest for nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics
The auxiliary field diffusion Monte Carlo (AFDMC) results for the EOS of pure neutron matter (PNM) and symmetric nuclear matter (SNM) at N2LO are shown in the left panel of Fig. 1 for the E 1 and E τ parametrizations
We have found that spin/isospin-dependent correlations yield a negligible improvement of the total energy in PNM, while, to the case of atomic nuclei [22], they have a large effect in SNM, where tensor contributions are much stronger
Summary
The nuclear equation of state (EOS) is of great interest for nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics. At proton fractions x ∼ 0.5, for the so-called symmetric nuclear matter (SNM), the EOS sets the bulk properties of atomic nuclei and determines where atomic nuclei saturate. The nuclear symmetry energy is a fundamental physical quantity that affects a range of neutron-star properties, such as cooling rates, the thickness of the neutron-star crust, the mass-radius relation [1,2,3], and the moment of inertia [4,5], and is deeply connected to properties of atomic nuclei, e.g., the dipole polarizability, the giant dipole resonance, and the neutron skin of neutron-rich nuclei [6]. It is possible to infer properties of the nuclear EOS at low densities and larger proton fractions from laboratory experiments with atomic nuclei, e.g., in the future Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University. Neutron stars provide a unique and complementary laboratory for dense nuclear matter at extreme conditions
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