Unified equations of state for cold non-accreting neutron stars with Brussels–Montreal functionals – I. Role of symmetry energy

International audienceThe theory of the nuclear energy-density functional is used to provide a unified and thermodynamically consistent treatment of all regions of cold non-accreting neutron stars. In orderto assess the impact of our lack of complete knowledge of the density dependence of thesymmetry energy on the constitution and the global structure of neutron stars, we employfour different functionals. All of them were precision fitted to essentially all the nuclear massdata with the Hartree–Fock–Bogoliubov method and two different neutron-matter equationsof state based on realistic nuclear forces. For each functional, we calculate the composition,the pressure–density relation, and the chemical potentials throughout the star. We show thatuncertainties in the symmetry energy can significantly affect the theoretical results for thecomposition and global structure of neutron stars. To facilitate astrophysical applications, weconstruct analytic fits to our numerical results