Neutron stars and the nuclear equation of state
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Abstract
We review the current status and recent progress of microscopic many-body\napproaches and phenomenological models, which are employed to construct the\nequation of state of neutron stars. The equation of state is relevant for the\ndescription of their structure and dynamical properties, and it rules also the\ndynamics of core-collapse supernovae and binary neutron star mergers. We\ndescribe neutron star matter assuming that the main degrees of freedom are\nnucleons and hyperons, disregarding the appearance of quark matter. We compare\nthe theoretical predictions of the different equation-of-state models with the\ncurrently available data coming from both terrestrial laboratory experiments\nand recent astrophysical observations. We also analyse the importance of the\nnuclear strong interaction and equation of state for the cooling properties of\nneutron stars. We discuss the main open challenges in the description of the\nequation of state, mainly focusing on the limits of the different many-body\ntechniques, the so-called "hyperon puzzle," and the dependence of the direct\nURCA processes on the equation of state.\n