Deconfinement to Quark Matter in Magnetars

TL;DR

This paper models magnetars as hybrid stars with quark and hadronic matter, analyzing how magnetic fields and Landau quantization influence particle populations and polarization across different stellar phases.

Contribution

It introduces a model of magnetars with a variable magnetic field using an extended sigma model to study phase transitions and polarization effects in hybrid stars.

Findings

Magnetic fields significantly affect particle populations in magnetars.

Landau quantization impacts the polarization of particles.

The model captures the transition from hadronic to quark matter.

Abstract

We model magnetars as hybrid stars, which have a core of quark matter surrounded by hadronic matter. For this purpose, we use an extended version of the SU(3) non-linear realization of the sigma model in which the degrees of freedom change naturally from hadrons to quarks as the temperature/density increases. The presence of a variable magnetic field allows us to study in detail the influence of Landau quantization and the anomalous magnetic moment on the particle population of the star, more precisely on particles with different spin projections. This allows us to calculate the polarization of the system throughout different phases of the star, hadronic, quark and also a mixed phase.