Neutron stars are not only of astrophysical interest, but are also of great interest to nuclear physicists because their attributes can be used to determine the properties of the dense matter in their cores. One of the most informative approaches for determining the equation of state (EoS) of this dense matter is to measure both a star's equatorial circumferential radius R e and its gravitational mass M . Here we report estimates of the mass and radius of the isolated 205.53 Hz millisecond pulsar PSR J0030+0451 obtained using a Bayesian inference approach to analyze its energy-dependent thermal X-ray waveform, which was observed using the Neutron Star Interior Composition Ex-Corresponding author: M. C. Miller miller@astro.umd.edu a Einstein Fellow arXiv:1912.05705v1 [astro-ph.HE] 12 Dec 2019 Miller, Lamb, Dittmann, et al. plorer (NICER). This approach is thought to be less subject to systematic errors than other approaches for estimating neutron star radii. We explored a variety of emission patterns on the stellar surface. Our best-fit model has three oval, uniform-temperature emitting spots and provides an excellent description of the pulse waveform observed using NICER. The radius and mass estimates given by this model are R e = 13.02 +1.24 −1.06 km and M = 1.44 +0.15 −0.14 M (68%). The independent analysis reported in the companion paper by Riley et al. explores different emitting spot models, but finds spot shapes and locations and estimates of R e and M that are consistent with those found in this work. We show that our measurements of R e and M for PSR J0030+0451 improve the astrophysical constraints on the EoS of cold, catalyzed matter above nuclear saturation density.

Quasi-periodic brightness oscillations (QPOs) with frequencies ranging from ∼ 300 Hz to ∼ 1200 Hz have been discovered in the X-ray emission from fourteen neutron stars in low-mass binary systems and from another neutron star in the direction of the Galactic center. These kilohertz QPOs are very strong, with rms relative amplitudes ranging up to ∼ 15% of the total X-ray countrate, and are remarkably coherent, with frequency to FWHM ratios as large as ∼ 200. Two simultaneous kilohertz QPOs differing in frequency by ∼ 250-350 Hz have been detected in twelve of the fifteen sources.Here we propose a model for these QPOs. In this model the X-ray source is a neutron star with a surface magnetic field ∼ 10 7 -10 10 G and a spin frequency of a few hundred Hertz, accreting gas via a Keplerian disk. Some of the accreting gas is channeled by the stellar magnetic field but some remains in a Keplerian disk flow that penetrates to within a few kilometers of the stellar surface. The frequency of the higher-frequency QPO in a kilohertz QPO pair is the Keplerian frequency at a radius near the sonic point at the inner edge of the Keplerian flow whereas the frequency of the lower-frequency QPO is approximately the difference between the Keplerian frequency at a radius near the sonic point and the stellar spin frequency. The difference between the frequencies of the pair of QPOs is therefore close to (but not necessarily exactly equal to) the stellar spin frequency. The amplitudes of the QPOs at the sonic-point Keplerian frequency and at the beat frequency depend on the strength of the neutron star's magnetic field and the accretion rate and hence one or both of these QPOs may sometimes be undetectable.

PSR J0740+6620 has a gravitational mass of 2.08 ± 0.07 M ⊙, which is the highest reliably determined mass of any neutron star. As a result, a measurement of its radius will provide unique insight into the properties of neutron star core matter at high densities. Here we report a radius measurement based on fits of rotating hot spot patterns to Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) and X-ray Multi-Mirror (XMM-Newton) X-ray observations. We find that the equatorial circumferential radius of PSR J0740+6620 is 13.7 − 1.5 + 2.6 km (68%). We apply our measurement, combined with the previous NICER mass and radius measurement of PSR J0030+0451, the masses of two other ∼2 M ⊙ pulsars, and the tidal deformability constraints from two gravitational wave events, to three different frameworks for equation-of-state modeling, and find consistent results at ∼1.5–5 times nuclear saturation density. For a given framework, when all measurements are included, the radius of a 1.4 M ⊙ neutron star is known to ±4% (68% credibility) and the radius of a 2.08 M ⊙ neutron star is known to ±5%. The full radius range that spans the ±1σ credible intervals of all the radius estimates in the three frameworks is 12.45 ± 0.65 km for a 1.4 M ⊙ neutron star and 12.35 ± 0.75 km for a 2.08 M ⊙ neutron star.