Recent progress in the calculation of nuclear matter

The 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 realistic Hamiltonian we employed Quantum Monte Carlo techniques to investigate the EOS of nuclear and neutron matter in order to show their implication to the neutron star structure. The low-density EOS of neutron matter is also computed. In this limit neutron matter can be directly compared to cold/dilute Fermi-gases which are experimentally accessible. In addition we show how ab-initio calculations could be used to constrain properties of energy-density functionals based on Skyrme forces, that are largely used to compute properties of heavy nuclei.