An extensive analysis of the isotropic charged pulsar Cen X-3 within a modified matter coupling gravity

In this work, we develop a relativistic description of the isotropic, charged pulsar Cen[Formula: see text]X-3 by embedding it in the [Formula: see text] gravity framework—a modification of Einstein’s general relativity (GR) in which the action depends on both the Ricci scalar [Formula: see text] and the trace of the energy-momentum tensor [Formula: see text]. Beginning with the well–behaved Durgapal—V metric functions [Durgapal, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 15, 2637 (1982)], we derive a spherically symmetric interior solution to the coupled Einstein-Maxwell field equations modified by the [Formula: see text] term. To fix the model parameters, we match the observed mass [Formula: see text] and radius [Formula: see text] of Cen[Formula: see text]X-3 [Rawls et al., Astrophys. J. (2011)], enforcing continuity at the stellar surface with the exterior Reissner Nordstr(̈o)m metric. Our analysis confirms that the solution satisfies all physical acceptability requirements including the energy conditions, causality constraints, and stability criteria throughout the configuration. The incorporation of electric charge and matter–geometry coupling in [Formula: see text] gravity thus offers a robust extension of GR, capable of producing consistent models for compact stellar objects.