Conditions for Phase Equilibrium in Supernovae, Proto-Neutron and Neutron Stars

TL;DR

This paper explores the conditions for phase equilibrium in astrophysical environments like supernovae and neutron stars, analyzing how local and global charge conservation laws affect phase transitions and introducing new mixed phase configurations.

Contribution

It provides a general formalism for phase equilibrium considering local and global conservation laws and applies it to astrophysical phase transitions, revealing new mixed phase possibilities.

Findings

Phase transition properties are independent of locally conserved charge fractions.

Modifications to the Maxwell construction are needed for hot, lepton-rich matter.

New mixed phases, such as locally charge neutral phases in proto-neutron stars, are identified.

Abstract

We investigate the qualitative properties of phase transitions in a general way, if not the single particle numbers of the system but only some particular charges like e.g. baryon number are conserved. In addition to globally conserved charges we analyze the implications of locally conserved charge fractions, like e.g. local electric charge neutrality or locally fixed proton or lepton fractions. The conditions for phase equilibrium are derived and it is shown, that the properties of the phase transition do not depend on the locally conserved fractions. Finally, the general formalism is applied to the liquid-gas phase transition and the hadron-quark phase transition for typical astrophysical environments like in supernovae, proto-neutron or a neutron stars. We demonstrate that the Maxwell construction known from cold-deleptonized neutron star matter with two locally charge neutral phases requires modifications and further assumptions concerning the applicability for hot lepton-rich matter. All possible combinations of local and global conservation laws are analyzed, and the physical meaningful cases are identified. Several new kinds of mixed phases are presented, as e.g. a locally charge neutral mixed phase in proto-neutron stars which will disappear during the cooling and deleptonization of the proto-neutron star.