2024ApJ...966..216B

The nonrelativistic model of nuclear matter (NM) with zero-range Skyrme interactions is employed within a Bayesian approach in order to study the behavior of the neutron star (NS) equation of state (EOS). A minimal number of constraints from nuclear physics and ab initio calculations of pure neutron matter (PNM) are imposed together with causality and a lower limit on the maximum mass of an NS to all our models. Our key result is that accounting for correlations among the values that the energy per neutron in PNM takes at various densities and that are typically disregarded efficiently constrains the behavior of the EOS at high densities. A series of global NS properties, e.g., maximum mass, central density of the maximum mass configuration, minimum NS mass that allows for direct URCA, and radii of intermediate and massive NSs, appear to be correlated with the value of effective neutron mass in PNM at 0.16 fm^–3. Together with similar studies in the literature our work contributes to a better understanding of the NS EOS as well as its link with the properties of dense NM.