Cold Quark Matter

Abstract

We perform an O(alpha_s^2) perturbative calculation of the equation of state of cold but dense QCD matter with two massless and one massive quark flavor, finding that perturbation theory converges reasonably well for quark chemical potentials above 1 GeV. Using a running coupling constant and strange quark mass, and allowing for further non-perturbative effects, our results point to a narrow range where absolutely stable strange quark matter may exist. Absent stable strange quark matter, our findings suggest that quark matter in compact star cores becomes confined to hadrons only slightly above the density of atomic nuclei. Finally, we show that equations of state including quark matter lead to hybrid star masses up to M~2M_solar, in agreement with current observations. For strange stars, we find maximal masses of M~2.75M_solar and conclude that confirmed observations of compact stars with M>2M_solar would strongly favor the existence of stable strange quark matter.

51 pages, 11 figures, v2: minor modifications and additional references

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Shapiro delay measurement of a two solar mass neutron star
• Inverse magnetic catalysis in dense holographic matter
• The physics of neutron stars
• Droplets in the cold and dense linear sigma model with quarks
• Large amplitude behavior of the bulk viscosity of dense matter
• Prospects of observing continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars
• The QCD Phase Structure at High Baryon Density
• Energy release from hadron-quark phase transition in neutron stars and the axial $w$-mode of gravitational waves