• Week 1 (October 23-26)


• Introduction to the Physics of dense matter
• Degeneracy pressure of the Fermi gas. Equilibrium of the white dwarfs and the Chandrasekhar mass.
• Linking macroscopic properties to microscopic dynamics: the equation of state.
• Star equilibrium in general relativity: the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equation.
• Nuclear physics of the neutron star crust
• Electron capture and neutronizaton.
• Semiempirical mass formula and stability of neutron-rich nuclei.
• Neutron drip.
• Nuclear physics of the neutron star interior
• The nucleon-nucleon interaction.
• Phenomenological nuclear hamiltonian.
• Nonrelativistic nuclear many-body theory.
• Relativistic mean-field theory: the σ-ω model.
• The equation of state of cold nuclear matter.

• Week 2 (November 27-30)


• The neutron star inner core
• Stability of strange hadronic matter.
• Deconfinement and stability of quark matter.
• Modeling quark matter at zero temperature: the MIT bag model and the Nambu Jona-Lasinio model.
• Colour superconductivity.
• Hybrid stars and quark stars
• The transition from hadronic matter to quark matter: coexisting phases or mixed phase ?
• Strange stars.
• Constraining the models of compact stars with astrophysical observations
• Compact star masses.
• Gravitational red shift.
• Neutrino emission and interactions and compact star cooling.
• Gravitational wave emission.