E Dry, S: Cosmic Puzzles in Neutron Realms

The holy grail of nuclear physics is the nuclear equation of state. It governs the behavior of nuclear matter at a large variety of densities and proton-neutron asymmetries. In particular for this thesis, I will be focusing on the equation of state for neutron-rich matter, which is perhaps more interesting than symmetric or proton-rich matter because of how much less well it is constrained. The observation of neutron-rich skins in neutron-rich nuclei, such as the doublymagic 208Pb , have helped constrain the equation of state near saturation density ¿0 ¿ 0.16 fm¿3. At higher density, neutron stars are prime real estate for observing the neutron-rich equation of state and help us infer important information about the behavior of matter in the most extreme environments.