Building relativistic mean field models for finite nuclei and neutron stars

The authors build a new relativistic energy density functional that reproduces nuclear properties over a wide range of densities, such as ground-state properties of finite nuclei, giant monopole energies, and the maximum neutron-star mass. The optimization procedure uses data from both nuclear experiments and astrophysical observations, and is supplemented by a covariance analysis that includes uncertainty estimates and correlation coefficients.