Strange Quark stars: Observations & Speculations

TL;DR

This paper explores the hypothesis that cold quark matter in compact stars may form a solid state through quark clustering, challenging the conventional view of color superconductivity and offering new insights into pulsar-like star phenomena.

Contribution

It proposes the novel idea that quark clustering could lead to solid quark stars, providing an alternative to the color superconducting state in cold quark matter.

Findings

Quark clustering may occur in cold quark matter at realistic densities.

Solid quark stars could explain pulsar-like phenomena.

Different manifestations of pulsar-like stars are modeled as solid quark stars.

Abstract

Two kinds of difficulties have challenged the physics community for many years: (1) knowing nature's building blocks (particle physics) and (2) understanding interacting many-body systems (many-body physics). Both of them exist in the research of quark matter and compact stars. This paper addresses the possibility that quark clustering, rather than a color super-conducting state, could occur in cold quark matter at realistic baryon densities of compact stars, since a weakly coupling treatment of the interaction between quarks might not be reliable. Cold quark matter is conjectured to be in a solid state if thermal kinematic energy is much lower than the interaction energy of quark clusters. Different manifestations of pulsar-like compact stars are discussed, as well as modeled in a regime of solid quark stars.