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An Analytical Toy Equation of State for Neutron Stars Consistent with Current Observations

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2026-06-30 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

Fast analytic and semi-analytic studies of neutron stars often require an equation of state that is convenient to evaluate while producing relativistic stellar sequences compatible with current multimessenger constraints. We construct such a benchmark by scanning a smooth double polytropic relation for the energy density as a function of pressure, ϵ^(p^)=a1p^Γ1+a2p^Γ2\hat\epsilon (\hat p)=a_1\hat p^{\Gamma_1}+a_2\hat p^{\Gamma_2}. The parameters are selected with filters based on massive pulsars, tidal deformability from the binary-neutron-star event GW170817, and NICER mass-radius measurements. A single polytropic baseline scan finds no model passing all filters, whereas a double-polytrope scan identifies a viable region. A curve-integral score, evaluated against public NICER and GW170817 posterior data sets, is then used to choose benchmark equations of state within this region. The selected representatives support Mmax=2.44M_{\max}=2.44--2.49M2.49\,M_\odot, with R1.411.3R_{1.4}\simeq 11.3 km and Λ1.4=485\Lambda_{1.4}=485--512512, and remain causal on the stable branch. This compact analytic family provides reference cases for relativistic stellar-structure tests at current observational scales.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.00070,
  title  = {An Analytical Toy Equation of State for Neutron Stars Consistent with Current Observations},
  author = {Tian-Shun Chen and Xiao-Ding Zhou and Kilar Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.00070},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

11 pages, 8 figures, 8 tables