New Nuclear Equation of State for Core-Collapse Supernovae with the Variational Method

Abstract

We report the current status of our project to construct a new nuclear equation of state (EOS) with the variational method for core-collapse supernova (SN) simulations. Starting from the realistic nuclear Hamiltonian, the EOS for uniform nuclear matter is constructed with the cluster variational method: For non-uniform nuclear matter, the EOS is calculated with the Thomas-Fermi method. The obtained thermodynamic quantities of uniform matter are in good agreement with those with more sophisticated Fermi Hypernetted Chain variational calculations, and phase diagrams constructed so far are close to those of the Shen-EOS. The structure of neutron stars calculated with this EOS at zero temperature is consistent with recent observational data, and the maximum mass of the neutron star is slightly larger than that with the Shen-EOS. Using the present EOS of uniform nuclear matter, we also perform the 1D simulation of the core-collapse supernovae by a simplified prescription of adiabatic hydrodynamics. The stellar core with the present EOS is more compact than that with the Shen-EOS, and correspondingly, the explosion energy in this simulation with the present EOS is larger than that with the Shen-EOS.