ANTISYMMETRIC TENSOR FIELD-INTERACTIONS AND NEUTRON-STAR MODELS

Gravity theories involving, besides the usual Einsteinian metric field , a macroscopically coupled, finite range antisymmetric tensor field B (munu) are studied as foils to the strong gravitational field predicti ons of general relativity, We consider the minimal class of such model s among the multi-parameter gravity theories recently introduced by Da mour, Deser and McCarthy. In the limiting case where the range mu-1 of the B field is much larger than the characteristic size of the system , this class comprises two arbitrary parameters: the coupling length l ambda, which measures the coupling of B(munu) to the baryon rest mass density, and a dimensionless parameter b characterizing the deviation of the 'physical' metric from the Einstein value. We show that when la mbda is a few kilometres and b is of order unity this class of models predicts strong-field deviations of order unity in the overall charact eristics of neutron stars: radius, binding energy, surface red shift a nd maximum mass.