Speaker
Description
We perform a statistical analysis of the thermal evolution of isolated neutron stars (NSs) by confronting theoretical cooling curves with luminosity–age measurements for 24 sources. For each object, we explore five purely nucleonic equations of state—APR4, FSU2R, DD2, IST, and NL3$\omega\rho$—combined with representative models of neutron superfluidity and proton superconductivity, while varying the gravitational mass and envelope composition. The analysis spans approximately $10^4$ cooling curves. Within this framework, we find that only the NL3$\omega\rho$ equation of state and, to a lesser extent, IST - both including neutron triplet pairing—provide an overall satisfactory description of the data. The remaining equations of state are in significant tension with the observations. These results indicate that neutron star cooling can place nontrivial constraints on dense matter, favoring specific combinations of the equation of state and nucleon pairing properties.