AbstractsPhysics

Neutron stars are composed of fermions of different kinds. At low densities, in the crust, there are noninteracting electrons and strongly interacting protons and neutrons. Because of this, we use a free Fermi gas to describe the electrons and a different more complex approach to account for the nucleons. For the free Fermi gas, we calculate the thermodynamical properties of matter using a relativistic quantum field theory formalism starting from the Lagrangian density and then calculate the energy-momentum tensor. For protons and neutrons, we make use of an approach based on the so-called Virial expansion, collecting experimental data for phase shifts and using it to calculate the second virial coefficients. With all these ingredients, we can calculate the equation of state and other thermodynamic variables for charge- neutral matter in ß-equilibrium.p Advisors/Committee Members: Dexheimer, Veronica (Committee Chair).