Thermal conductivity of color-flavor locked quark matter

TL;DR

This paper calculates the thermal conductivity of color-flavor locked quark matter at low temperatures, focusing on contributions from superfluid phonons and neutral kaons, with implications for the thermal evolution of compact stars.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed calculation of thermal conductivity in CFL quark matter considering collective modes using kinetic theory.

Findings

Phonon thermal conductivity is approximately 1.04 x 10^{26} mu_{500}^8 Delta_{50}^{-6} erg/(cm s K).

Kaon contribution to thermal conductivity is about 2.81 x 10^{21} f_{pi,100}^4 T_{MeV}^{1/2} m_{10}^{-5/2} erg/(cm s K).

CFL quark matter cores in stars become isothermal within a few seconds.

Abstract

We compute the thermal conductivity of color-flavor locked (CFL) quark matter. At temperatures below the scale set by the gap in the quark spectrum, transport properties are determined by collective modes. In this work we focus on the contribution from the lightest modes, the superfluid phonon and the massive neutral kaon. The calculation is done in the framework of kinetic theory, using variational solutions of the linearized Boltzmann equation. We find that the thermal conductivity due to phonons is \kappa^P =1.04 10^{26} mu_{500}^8 \Delta_{50}^{-6} erg/(cm s K), where \mu_{500} is the chemical potential in units of 500 MeV and \Delta_{50} is the gap in units of 50 MeV. The contribution of kaons is \kappa^K = 2.81 10^{21} f_{\pi,100}^4 T_{MeV}^{1/2} m_{10}^{-5/2} erg/(cm s K), where f_{\pi,100} is the pion decay constant in units of 100 MeV, T_{MeV} is the temperature in units of 1 MeV, and m_{10} is the kaon mass in units of 10 MeV. These values are smaller than previous estimates, but still much larger than (in the case of phonons) or similar to (for kaons) the corresponding values in nuclear matter. From the phonon thermal conductivity we estimate that a CFL quark matter core of a compact star becomes isothermal on a timescale of a few seconds.