Building post-Newtonian neutron stars

Andersson, Nils, Gittins, Fabian, Yin, Shanshan and Panosso Macedo, Rodrigo (2023) Building post-Newtonian neutron stars. Classical and Quantum Gravity, 40 (2), [025016]. (doi:10.1088/1361-6382/acace5).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Owed to their compactness, neutron stars involve strong gravity and extreme density physics. Nevertheless, at present, there are a variety of problems where progress (at least conceptually) can be made in the context of weak gravity. Motivated by this we examine how accurately one can model neutron stars using the post-Newtonian (pN) approximation to general relativity. In general, we find there is a significant degree of freedom in how the pN equations of stellar structure can be formulated. We discuss this flexibility in the formulation and provide examples to demonstrate the impact on stellar models. We also consider the (closely related) problem of building neutron stars using isotropic coordinates. In this context, we provide a new strategy for solving the equations (based on a scaling argument) which significantly simplifies the problem.

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Accepted/In Press date: 19 December 2022

e-pub ahead of print date: 3 January 2023

Published date: 19 January 2023

Additional Information: Funding Information: N A and F G are grateful for support from STFC via Grant Numbers ST/R00045X/1 and ST/V000551/1. Parts of NA’s contribution to this work were carried out at the Aspen Center for Physics, which is supported by National Science Foundation Grant PHY-1607611. He also thanks the Simons Foundation for generous travel support. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.

Keywords: neutron stars, post-Newtonian theory, stellar structure

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