Constraints on the equation of state of cold dense matter from nuclear physics and astrophysics

The equation of state (EoS) of dense matter, i.e., the relation between the average baryon number density n, the pressure P and the mass-energy density ρ is a crucial ingredient for the description of neutron stars. The unified Brussels-Montreal EoSs BSk19, BSk20, and BSk21 are based on the nuclear energy-density functional theory with generalised Skyrme effective interactions, supplemented with a microscopic contact pairing interaction. In this paper we test the unified Brussels-Montreal EoSs against various constraints coming from both nuclear physics and astrophysics. The nuclear physics constraints include the analysis of nuclear flow and kaon production in heavy-ion collision experiments, as well as recent microscopic many-body calculations of infinite homogeneous neutron matter. Astrophysical observations, especially recent neutron-star mass measurements, provide valuable constraints on the high-density part of the equation of state that is not accessible in laboratory experiments. The results show that the Brussels-Montreal EoSs are compatible with the most recent microscopic many-body calculations of neutron matter, as well as with empirical constraints on symmetric nuclear matter obtained from the analysis of heavy-ion collisions