How strange are compact star interiors ?

TL;DR

This paper explores the properties of quark matter in compact stars using a NJL model with color superconductivity, highlighting the conditions for strange quark phases and implications for star observations.

Contribution

It introduces a NJL-type model with color superconductivity to study hybrid star interiors and the conditions for strange quark matter phases.

Findings

Color superconducting phases are favored over non-superconducting ones.

Strange quark matter phases are unlikely without strong flavor mixing.

Observational mass-radius data can constrain dense matter equations of state.

Abstract

We discuss a Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) type quantum field theoretical approach to the quark matter equation of state with color superconductivity and construct hybrid star models on this basis. It has recently been demonstrated that with increasing baryon density, the different quark flavors may occur sequentially, starting with down-quarks only, before the second light quark flavor and at highest densities also the strange quark flavor appears. We find that color superconducting phases are favorable over non-superconducting ones which entails consequences for thermodynamic and transport properties of hybrid star matter. In particular, for NJL-type models no strange quark matter phases can occur in compact star interiors due to mechanical instability against gravitational collapse, unless a sufficiently strong flavor mixing as provided by the Kobayashi-Maskawa-'t Hooft determinant interaction is present in the model. We discuss observational data on mass-radius relationships of compact stars which can put constraints on the properties of dense matter equation of state.