Isospin asymmetry and neutron stars in holographic QCD in the Veneziano limit

Isospin asymmetric nuclear matter is introduced to V-QCD, a bottom-up holographic QCD model. Using a small isospin chemical potential, we extract the symmetry energy in the model, finding excellent agreement with experimental results for some of the potentials. Extending the calculation for finite- and arbitrary-sized isospin chemical potentials, we construct <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:mrow><a:mi>β</a:mi></a:mrow></a:math>-equilibrated neutron stars via the usual Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkov equations. We find, pleasingly, that the neutron stars passing the mass-radius and tidal deformability constraints are those with the potentials that also lead to excellent symmetry energies.