Speaker
Description
The equation of state of dense nuclear matter remains one of the main uncertainties in modelling neutron star interiors. Holographic QCD provides a useful strongly coupled framework for this problem, but descriptions based on homogeneous baryonic matter generally lead to equations of state that are too stiff and struggle to reproduce realistic nuclear matter properties around saturation. In this talk, I will present a top-down holographic construction of nuclear matter beyond the approximation of homogeneity, based on localized interacting holographic baryons. This change of perspective leads to equations of state that are significantly softer than those obtained in homogeneous approaches and that better reproduce key properties of symmetric nuclear matter, including the saturation density, the chemical potential at onset, the binding energy per nucleon, the incompressibility, and the baryon mass. After extending the construction to beta-equilibrated matter, the resulting equations of state lead to neutron star mass–radius relations compatible with current NICER constraints.