Bulk viscosity in a cold CFL superfluid

TL;DR

This paper calculates the bulk viscosity coefficient of cold CFL quark matter due to superfluid phonon collisions, providing insights into the dissipation mechanisms relevant for the rotational dynamics of compact stars.

Contribution

It introduces a calculation of the bulk viscosity coefficient in cold CFL superfluid matter considering scale breaking effects and phonon interactions, extending previous hydrodynamic models.

Findings

Bulk viscosity coefficient is proportional to m_s^4/T.

Dominant processes are collinear splitting and joining.

Results are relevant for understanding compact star rotation.

Abstract

We compute one of the bulk viscosity coefficients of cold CFL quark matter in the temperature regime where the contribution of mesons, quarks and gluons to transport phenomena is Boltzmann suppressed. In that regime dissipation occurs due to collisions of superfluid phonons, the Goldstone modes associated to the spontaneous breaking of baryon symmetry. We first review the hydrodynamics of relativistic superfluids, and remind that there are at least three bulk viscosity coefficients in these systems. We then compute the bulk viscosity coefficient associated to the normal fluid component of the superfluid. In our analysis we use Son's effective field theory for the superfluid phonon, amended to include scale breaking effects proportional to the square of the strange quark mass m_s. We compute the bulk viscosity at leading order in the scale breaking parameter, and find that it is dominated by collinear splitting and joining processes. The resulting transport coefficient is zeta=0.011 m_s^4/T, growing at low temperature T until the phonon fluid description stops making sense. Our results are relevant to study the rotational properties of a compact star formed by CFL quark matter.