Eur. Phys. J. A (2014) 50: 43
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2014-14043-8

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Symmetry energy: nuclear masses and neutron stars

¹ Dépt. de Physique, Université de Montréal, H3C 3J7, Montréal, Québec, Canada
² Institut d’Astronomie et d’Astrophysique, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1050, Brussels, Belgium

^* e-mail: nchamel@ulb.ac.be

Received: 29 June 2013
Revised: 3 September 2013
Accepted: 4 September 2013
Published online: 27 February 2014

Abstract

We describe the main features of our most recent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov nuclear mass models, based on 16-parameter generalized Skyrme forces. They have been fitted to the data of the 2012 Atomic Mass Evaluation, and favour a value of 30MeV for the symmetry coefficient J , the corresponding root-mean square deviation being 0.549MeV. We find that this conclusion is compatible with measurements of neutron-skin thickness. By constraining the underlying interactions to fit various equations of state of neutron matter calculated ab initio our models are well adapted to a realistic and unified treatment of all regions of neutron stars. We use our models to calculate the composition, the equation of state, the mass-radius relation and the maximum mass. Comparison with observations of neutron stars again favours a value of J = 30 MeV.