Speaker
Description
Precise and reliable measurements of neutron star radii are essential to our understanding of cold, catalyzed matter beyond nuclear saturation density. Recently, NASA’s Neutron Star Interior Compo- sition Explorer (NICER) satellite has provided high-quality data sets that have yielded measurements of the mass (M=1.44+-0.15 Msun) and radius (R=13+1.2-1.0 km) of the 206 Hz pulsar PSR J0030+0451, and of the radius (R=13.7+2.6-1.5 km) of the M=2.08+-0.07 Msun, 346 Hz pulsar PSR J0740+6620. I will discuss our group’s work on these pulsars and will in particular discuss the assumptions that have gone into our analyses, to help the assessment of our results. I will also discuss the implications of our results for the properties of the dense matter in the cores of neutron stars.
