Thermal effects in nuclear matter and neutron stars

In different astrophysical environments involving neutron stars, such as mergers or newly born stars, a reliable model of a finite-temperature equation of state is needed. Temperature has implications in equilibrium and dynamical phenomena, therefore a fully consistent framework should be able to take into account thermal effects in single-nucleon properties alongside yielding accurate results for average thermodynamic quantities. In this Thesis, we employ a recently developed effective interaction based on the Correlated Basis Functions theory, being able to account for nuclear correlations and two- and three-nucleon potentials. After extensively discussing the properties of its generalisation to nonzero temperature, we apply it in the calculation of the neutrino mean free path and emissivity. In the latter, we study how effective weak transition operators alter the results.