Nuclear Physics Seminar: Tyler Gorda, The Ohio State University
Constrained Brownian-bridge prior for neutron-star equation-of-state inference
Event Details
- Date: December 9, 2025
- Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
- Location: 2128 Physics Research Building
Abstract
The equation of state (EOS) of neutron-star matter is known in two opposing limits: in the nuclear-matter phase at baryon densities around 1-2 times nuclear saturation density (0.16 baryon/fm^3) and in the deconfined quark-matter phase around 25-40 times this density. The requirement that the EOS is thermodynamically stable and causal at all densities between these two limits leads to three-dimensional global constraints in chemical potential, number density, and pressure, as first pointed out explicitly by Komoltsev and Kurkela. Within this unknown density regime from 2-25 nuclear saturation densities, one would like to make minimal assumptions about the EOS, and in particular not to assume any additional density correlations beyond those required by global stability and causality. The desire to simultaneously impose global constraints and minimal local assumptions is hard to satisfy, with current approaches to neutron-star EOS inference often weakening one of these assumptions in order to make EOS sampling more efficient. In this talk, I present a new method for generating model-agnostic EOSs that are stable and causal by construction, while simultaneously obeying any number of theory constraints as specified by triples in chemical potential, number density, and pressure. This method does not require any shooting to obey constraints at different densities, making it efficient, while only introducing minimal local Gaussian correlations.
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