How long-range interactions tune the damping in compact stars

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that long-range interactions significantly affect the bulk viscosity of quark matter in compact stars, influencing their oscillation damping and potentially explaining observational data.

Contribution

It reveals how long-range interactions alter the damping properties of quark matter, impacting astrophysical phenomena and observational signatures.

Findings

Long-range interactions shift the resonant maximum of bulk viscosity.

Compact stars with ungapped quark matter align with observed low mass X-ray binary data.

Viscosity can vary by many orders of magnitude due to these interactions.

Abstract

Long-range interactions lead to non-Fermi liquid effects in dense matter. We show that, in contrast to other material properties, their effect on the bulk viscosity of quark matter is significant since they shift its resonant maximum and can thereby change the viscosity by many orders of magnitude. This is of importance for the damping of oscillations of compact stars, like in particular unstable r-modes, and the quest to detect signatures of deconfined matter in astrophysical observations. We find that, in contrast to neutron stars with standard damping mechanisms, compact stars that contain ungapped quark matter are consistent with the observed data on low mass x-ray binaries.