We review the current status and recent progress of microscopic many-body approaches and phenomenological models, which are employed to construct the equation of state of neutron stars. The equation of state is relevant for the description of their structure and dynamical properties, and it rules also the dynamics of core-collapse supernovae and binary neutron star mergers. We describe neutron star matter assuming that the main degrees of freedom are nucleons and hyperons, disregarding the appearance of quark matter. We compare the theoretical predictions of the different equation-of-state models with the currently available data coming from both terrestrial laboratory experiments and recent astrophysical observations. We also analyze the importance of the nuclear strong interaction and equation of state for the cooling properties of neutron stars. We discuss the main open challenges in the description of the equation of state, mainly focusing on the limits of the different many-body techniques, the so-called “hyperon puzzle,” and the dependence of the direct URCA processes on the equation of state.

我们回顾了用于构建中子星状态方程的微观多体方法和现象学模型的现状和最新进展。状态方程与描述它们的结构和动力学性质有关，它也支配着核心坍缩超新星和双中子星并合的动力学。我们假设主要的自由度是核子和超子来描述中子星物质，而忽略夸克物质的出现。我们将不同状态方程模型的理论预测与来自地面实验室实验和最近的天体物理观测的当前可用数据进行比较。我们还分析了核强相互作用和状态方程对中子星冷却特性的重要性。