Speaker
Description
We present a comprehensive study of the thermal evolution of isolated neutron stars (NSs) based on a statistical analysis of cooling curves for five purely nucleonic equations of state (EoS). Cooling curves are computed using the publicly available NScool code and statistically compared with X-ray measurements of NS surface luminosities. The predicted luminosity for each source depends on its gravitational mass, envelope composition, age, and on neutron and proton pairing gaps in the $^1S_0$ and $^3P_2$ channels. These parameters are varied to identify the global minimum $\chi^2$ for each EoS. This work employs a denser and finer grid of nuisance parameters than previous studies, producing a significantly larger theoretical dataset of cooling curves and comparing it against an expanded set of X-ray observations. We find that several candidate EoS exhibit no region in parameter space capable of yielding a minimum $\chi^2$ below the observational 2$\sigma$ confidence threshold.
