PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

While QCD appears not to be accurately solvable in the regime of interest forneutron star physics, microscopic calculations are feasible at both low andvery high densities. In this work, we propose using the most realisticcalculations in these two regimes of nuclear physics and perturbative QCD, andconstruct equations of state by matching the results requiring thermodynamicconsistency. We find that the resulting equations of state --- in contrast toseveral hadronic ones --- are able to reproduce current observational data onneutron stars without any fine tuning, and allow stable hybrid stars withmasses up to 2.1M_{sun}. Using recent observations of star radii, we perform amaximum likelihood analysis to further constrain the equation of state, and inaddition show that the effects of rotation on radii and masses should not beneglected in future precision studies.