Neutron star equation of state from the quark level in the light of GW170817

Abstract: Matter state inside neutron stars is an exciting problem in astrophysics, nuclear physics and particle physics. The equation of state (EOS) of neutron stars plays a crucial role in the present multimessenger astronomy, especially after the event of GW170817. We propose a new neutron star EOS "QMF18" from the quark level, which describes well robust observational constraints from free-space nucleon, nuclear matter saturation, heavy pulsar measurements and the tidal deformability of the very recent GW170817 observation. For this purpose, we employ the quark-mean-field (QMF) model, allowing one to tune the density dependence of the symmetry energy and study effectively its correlations with the Love number and the tidal deformability. We provide tabulated data for the new EOS and compare it with other recent EOSs from various many-body frameworks.