paper

Impact of the PSR J0740+6620 radius constraint on the properties of high-density matter

arXiv:2106.05313 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.104.063003

Abstract

X-ray pulse profile modeling of PSR J0740+6620, the most massive known pulsar, with data from the NICER and XMM-Newton observatories recently led to a measurement of its radius. We investigate this measurement's implications for the neutron star equation of state (EoS), employing a nonparametric EoS model based on Gaussian processes and combining information from other x-ray, radio and gravitational-wave observations of neutron stars. Our analysis mildly disfavors EoSs that support a disconnected hybrid star branch in the mass-radius relation, a proxy for strong phase transitions, with a Bayes factor of . For such EoSs, the transition mass from the hadronic to the hybrid branch is constrained to lie outside () . We also find that the conformal sound-speed bound is violated inside neutron star cores, which implies that the core matter is strongly interacting. The squared sound speed reaches a maximum of at times nuclear saturation density at 90% credibility. Since all but the gravitational-wave observations prefer a relatively stiff EoS, PSR J0740+6620's central density is only times nuclear saturation, limiting the density range probed by observations of cold, nonrotating neutron stars in -equilibrium.

18 pages, 11 figures, data available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5397808

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