Effects of the Symmetry Energy and its Slope on Neutron Star Properties

• DOI: 10.1007/s13538-014-0252-4
• Publication Date: 2014-08-19T14:10:37Z
• Authors: Luiz L. Lopes; Debora P. Menezes
• Keywords: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE); Nuclear Theory (nucl-th); Nuclear Theory; 0103 physical sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena; 01 natural sciences

In this work we study the influence of the symmetry energy and its slope on three major properties of neutron stars: the maximum mass, the radii of the canonical 1.4$M_\odot$ and the minimum mass that enables the direct URCA effect. We utilize four parametrizations of the relativistic quantum hadrodynamics and vary the symmetry energy within accepted values. We see that although the maximum mass is almost independent of it, the radius of the canonical $1.4M_\odot$ and the mass that enables the direct URCA effect is strongly correlated with the symmetry energy and its slope. Also, since we expect that the radius grows with the slope, a theoretical limit arises when we increase this quantity above certain values.<br/>RevTEX; 19 pages, 13 figures<br/>