Microscopic calculation of the equation of state of nuclear matter and neutron star structure

We present results for neutron star models constructed with a new equation of state for nuclear matter at zero temperature. The ground state is computed using the Auxiliary Field Diffusion Monte Carlo (AFDMC) technique, with nucleons interacting via a semi-phenomenological Hamiltonian including a realistic two-body interaction. The effect of many-body forces is included by means of additional density-dependent terms in the Hamiltonian. In this letter we compare the properties of the resulting neutron-star models with those obtained using other nuclear Hamiltonians, focusing on the relations between mass and radius, and between the gravitational mass and the baryon number.