Zenia Zuraiq

Hi! I am Zenia Zuraiq, a Ph.D. student and Prime Minister’s Research Fellow at the Department of Physics, IISc Bangalore. I am also an associate member of the Indian Pulsar Timing Array (InPTA) collaboration.

I work in high energy astrophysics. More specifically, I study the compact objects formed at the end stages of a star’s life, focussing on neutron stars and white dwarfs. You can find a list of my publications here.

selected publications

Massive neutron stars as mass gap candidates: Exploring equation of state and magnetic field

Zenia Zuraiq, Banibrata Mukhopadhyay, and Fridolin Weber

Phys. Rev. D Jan 2024

Abs arXiv

The densities in the cores of the neutron stars (NSs) can reach several times that of the nuclear saturation density. The exact nature of matter at these densities is still virtually unknown. We consider a number of proposed, phenomenological relativistic mean-field equations of state to construct theoretical models of NSs. We find that the emergence of exotic matter at these high densities restricts the mass of NSs to ≃ 2.2M⊙. However, the presence of magnetic fields and a model anisotropy significantly increases the star’s mass, placing it within the observational mass gap that separates the heaviest NSs from the lightest black holes. Therefore, we propose that gravitational wave observations, like GW190814, and other potential candidates within this mass gap, may actually represent massive, magnetized NSs.