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The nonlocal three-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model is used to study quark deconfinement in the cores of neutron stars (NSs). The quark-hadron phase transition is modeled using both the Maxwell construction and the Gibbs construction. For the Maxwell construction, we find that all NSs with core densities beyond the phase transition density are unstable. Therefore, no quark matter cores would exist inside such NSs. The situation is drastically different if the phase transition is treated as a Gibbs transition, resulting in stable NSs whose stellar cores are a mixture of hadronic matter and deconfined quarks. The largest fractions of quarks achieved in the quark-hadron mixed phase are around 50%. No choice of parametrization or composition leads to a pure quark matter core. The inclusion of repulsive vector interactions among the quarks is crucial since the equation of state (EoS) in the quark-hadron mixed phase is significantly softer than that of the pure hadronic phase.
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Phases of Hadron-Quark Matter in (Proto) Neutron Stars
In the first part of this paper, we investigate the possible existence of a structured hadron-quark mixed phase in the cores of neutron stars. This phase, referred to as the hadron-quark pasta phase, consists of spherical blob, rod, and slab rare phase geometries. Particular emphasis is given to modeling the size of this phase in rotating neutron stars. We use the relativistic mean-field theory to model hadronic matter and the non-local three-flavor Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model to describe quark matter. Based on these models, the hadron-quark pasta phase exists only in very massive neutron stars, whose rotational frequencies are less than around 300 Hz. All other stars are not dense enough to trigger quark deconfinement in their cores. Part two of the paper deals with the quark-hadron composition of hot (proto) neutron star matter. To this end we use a local three-flavor Polyakov–Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model which includes the ’t Hooft (quark flavor mixing) term. It is found that this term leads to non-negligible changes in the particle composition of (proto) neutron stars made of hadron-quark matter.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1714068
- PAR ID:
- 10174320
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Universe
- Volume:
- 5
- Issue:
- 7
- ISSN:
- 2218-1997
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 169
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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We study the effect of strong magnetic field on competing chiral and diquark order parameters in a regime of moderately dense quark matter. The interdependence of the chiral and diquark condensates through nonperturbative quark mass and strong coupling effects is analyzed in a two-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model. In the weak magnetic field limit, our results agree qualitatively with earlier zero-field studies in the literature that find a critical coupling ratio G D / G S ~ 1.1 below which chiral or superconducting order parameters appear almost exclusively. Above the critical ratio, there exists a significant mixed broken phase region where both gaps are nonzero. However, a strong magnetic field B ≳ 1 0 18 G disrupts this mixed broken phase region and changes a smooth crossover found in the weak-field case to a first-order transition for both gaps at almost the same critical density. Our results suggest that in the two-flavor approximation to moderately dense quark matter strong magnetic field enhances the possibility of a mixed phase at high density, with implications for the structure, energetics, and vibrational spectrum of neutron stars.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/universe5070169
