Reconstructing the neutron star equation of state from observational data via automatic differentiation

Abstract: Neutron star observables like masses, radii, and tidal deformability are direct probes to the dense matter equation of state~(EoS). A novel deep learning method that optimizes an EoS in the automatic differentiation framework of solving inverse problems is presented. The trained neural network EoS yields narrow bands for the relationship between the pressure and speed of sound as a function of the mass density. The results are consistent with those obtained from conventional approaches and the observational bound on the tidal deformability inferred from the gravitational wave event, GW170817.