Astrophysical constraints on the confining models : the Field Correlator Method

TL;DR

This paper investigates how confinement models, specifically the Field Correlator Method, affect the equation of state of quark matter in neutron star cores, and compares theoretical maximum masses with observational data.

Contribution

It applies the Field Correlator Method to quark matter in neutron stars and assesses the impact of the gluon condensate on maximum mass predictions.

Findings

Current gluon condensate values yield maximum masses marginally consistent with observations.

Increasing the gluon condensate allows for larger maximum neutron star masses.

The study links confinement parameters to astrophysical constraints.

Abstract

We explore the relevance of confinement in quark matter models for the possible quark core of neutron stars. For the quark phase, we adopt the equation of state (EoS) derived with the Field Correlator Method, extended to the zero temperature limit. For the hadronic phase, we use the microscopic Brueckner-Hartree-Fock many-body theory. We find that the currently adopted value of the gluon condensate $G_2 \simeq 0.006-0.007 \rm {GeV^4}$, which gives a critical temperature $T_c \simeq 170 \rm MeV$, produces maximum masses which are only marginally consistent with the observational limit, while larger masses are possible if the gluon condensate is increased.