Validity of a finite temperature expansion for dense nuclear matter
Creators
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1.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
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2.
Washington University in St. Louis
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3.
Kent State University
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University of Southampton
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5.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
In this work we provide a new, well-controlled expansion of the equation of state of dense matter from zero to finite temperatures (π) while covering a wide range of charge fractions (ππ), from pure neutron to isospin symmetric nuclear matter. Our expansion can be used to describe neutron star mergers using the equation of state inferred from neutron star observations. We discuss how knowledge from low-energy nuclear experiments and heavy-ion collisions can be directly incorporated into the expansion. We also suggest new thermodynamic quantities of interest that can be calculated from theoretical models or directly inferred by experimental data that can be used to infer the finite temperature equation of state. With our new method, we can quantify the uncertainty in our finite π and ππ expansions without making assumptions about the underlying degrees of freedom. We can reproduce results from a microscopic equation of state up to π=100 MeV for baryon chemical potential ππ΅ β³ 1100 MeV [≈(1–2)β’πsat] within 5% error, with even better results for larger ππ΅ and/or lower π. We investigate the sources of numerical and theoretical uncertainty and discuss future directions of study.
Copyright and License
©2026 American Physical Society.
Acknowledgement
We thank Jorge Noronha and Mark Alford for useful comments and discussions. We acknowledge support from the support from the US-DOE Nuclear Science Grant No. DE-SC0023861 and the National Science Foundation under Grants No. PHY1748621, No. MUSES OAC-2103680, and No. PHY2309210. D.M. is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. DGE-1746047 and by the Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe Graduate Fellowship. We also acknowledge support from the Illinois Campus Cluster, a computing resource that is operated by the Illinois Campus Cluster Program (ICCP) in conjunction with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), which is supported by funds from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. V.D. acknowledges additional support from the Department of Energy under Grant No. DE-SC0024700 and from the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NP3M PHY2116686. A.H. and L.B. are partly supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics, under Award No. DE-FG02-05ER41375. A.H. furthermore acknowledges financial support by the UKRI under the Horizon Europe Guarantee Project No. EP/Z000939/1.
Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this article are not publicly available. The data are available from the authors upon reasonable request.
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Additional details
Additional titles
- Alternative title
- Finite-temperature expansion of the dense-matter equation of state
Related works
- Is new version of
- Discussion Paper: arXiv:2404.01658 (arXiv)
Funding
- United States Department of Energy
- DE-SC0023861
- National Science Foundation
- PHY1748621
- National Science Foundation
- OAC-2103680
- National Science Foundation
- PHY2309210
- National Science Foundation
- DGE-1746047
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- National Center for Supercomputing Applications
- United States Department of Energy
- DE-SC0024700
- National Science Foundation
- NP3M PHY2116686
- United States Department of Energy
- DE-FG02-05ER41375
- UK Research and Innovation
- EP/Z000939/1
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Caltech groups
- Astronomy Department , TAPIR , Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics , Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA) , Physics Department
- Publication Status
- Published