Strangeness in Neutron Stars

Abstract

It is generally agreed on that the tremendous densities reached in the centers of neutron stars provide a high-pressure environment in which numerous novel particles processes are likely to compete with each other. These processes range from the generation of hyperons to quark deconfinement to the formation of kaon condensates and H-matter. There are theoretical suggestions of even more exotic processes inside neutron stars, such as the formation of absolutely stable strange quark matter, a configuration of matter even more stable than the most stable atomic nucleus, iron. In the latter event, neutron stars would be largely composed of pure quark matter, eventually enveloped in a thin nuclear crust. No matter which physical processes are actually realized inside neutron stars, each one leads to fingerprints, some more pronounced than others though, in the observable stellar quantities. This feature combined with the unprecedented progress in observational astronomy, which allows us to see vistas with remarkable clarity that previously were only imagined, renders neutron stars to nearly ideal probes for a wide range of physical studies, including the role of strangeness in dense matter.

15 pages, 6 figures, Presented at the 5th International Conference on Strangeness in Quark Matter (Strangeness 2000), Berkeley, California, USA, July 20-25, 2000

References in corpus (6)

• Is SAX J1808.4-3658 a Strange Star ?
• High Density QCD and Instantons
• Magnetic fields within color superconducting neutron star cores
• Diquark Condensates and Compact Star Cooling
• R-mode runaway and rapidly rotating neutron stars
• Lower Limit on Radius as a Function of Mass for Neutron Stars

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Faint objects in motion: the new frontier of high precision astrometry
• Spin-down of Relativistic Stars with Phase Transitions and PSR J0537-6910
• Centrality dependence of K+ produced in Pb+Pb collisions at 158 GeV per nucleon
• Chandrasekhar limit for rotating quark stars
• Strange Particles and Neutron Stars - Experiments at Gsi
• Stable quark stars beyond neutran stars : can they account for the missing matter ?