Equation of state of nuclear matter and of properties of neutron drops

Knowledge of the equation of state (EOS) of nuclear matter is of great relevance for nuclear astrophysics. In fact, the EOS is the starting point for the study of properties of the crust and of the outer core of neutron stars. The EOS can be computed by considering non-relativistic nucleons interacting with an effective Hamiltonian, that in part is derived phenomenologically, and fitted to scattering data. Starting from a semi-realistic Hamiltonian we employed Quantum Monte Carlo techniques to investigate the EOS of nuclear and neutron matter in order to show their implication for neutron star structure. In the second part of the talk we show properties of neutron drops. These systems are not realizable in experiments, but they can model neutron-rich nuclei. We show how ab-initio calculations of neutron drops could be used to constrain properties of energy-density functionals based on Skyrme forces, that are largely used to compute properties of heavy nuclei.