Join us for a colloquium presented by Dr. Jeremy Holt

There is a pre-event reception with cookies and coffee in the 2nd floor physics library at 3:00pm!

Neutron stars are one of Nature’s most intriguing stellar objects, containing matter under extraordinary conditions of density, temperature, and composition that are difficult to produce in the laboratory. In recent years, neutron star observations have begun to place novel constraints on the properties of strongly interacting matter in the high-density regime, where current theoretical methods are challenged. At the same time, nuclear effective field theories have matured into a compelling framework to study nuclear matter with quantified uncertainties at the moderate densities present throughout much of neutron star interiors.

In this talk, I will give an overview of recent progress in the microscopic description of hot and dense nuclear matter needed to understand neutron star structure as well as the hydrodynamic evolution of core collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers. I will also discuss how modern machine learning models can enable more efficient many-body perturbation theory calculations of hot and dense nuclear matter and more reliable estimates for the associated theory uncertainties.