QCD against BlackHoles of Stellar Mass

TL;DR

This paper explores how quantum chromodynamics (QCD) phase transitions within supermassive neutron stars can prevent their collapse into black holes by inducing explosive phenomena and transient states, challenging traditional gravitational collapse models.

Contribution

It introduces a mechanism where QCD vacuum phase transitions cause explosive effects that can halt or alter the collapse of massive neutron stars, offering new insights into stellar evolution.

Findings

QCD phase transition triggers star collapse and heating.

High-mass stars may form transient states instead of black holes.

Vacuum pressure changes can prevent black hole formation.

Abstract

In course of the consolidation of nucleon (neutron) spacing inside a compact star, two key factors are expected to come into play side by side: the lack of self-stabilization against shutting into black hole (BH) and forthcoming phase transition - color deconfinement and QCD-vacuum reconstruction - within the nuclear matter the star is composed of. These phenomena bring the star to evolve in the quite different (opposite) ways and should be taken into account at once, as the gravitational compression is considered. Under the above transition, which is expected to occur within any supermassive neutron star (NS), the hadronic-phase (HPh) vacuum - a coherent state of gluon- and chiral $q\bar q$-condensates - turns, first near the star center, into the "empty" (perturbation) subhadronic-phase (SHPh) one and, thus, pre-existing (very high) vacuum pressure falls there down rather abruptly; as a result, the "cold" star starts collapsing almost freely into the new vacuum. If the stellar mass is sufficiently large, then this implosion is shown to result in an enormous heating within the star central domain (up to a temperature about 100-200 MeV or, maybe, even higher), what makes the pressure from within to grow up, predominantly due to degeneracy breaking and multiple $q\bar q$-pair production. Thus, a "flaming wall" could arise, which withstands the further collapsing and brings the star off the irrevocable shutting into BH. Instead, the star either forms a transient quasi-steady state (just the case of relatively low star mass) and, losing its mass, evolves gradually into the "normal" steady NS, or is doomed for self-liquidation in full (at higher masses).