Entropy, Disequilibrium and Complexity in Compact Stars: An information theory approach to understand their Composition

TL;DR

This paper uses information theory to constrain the possible compositions of neutron stars, suggesting that exotic strange quark stars may be favored if order costs energy, and that neutron stars tend to minimize complexity.

Contribution

It introduces an information theory approach to restrict the equations of state for neutron stars, offering a novel perspective on their composition.

Findings

Exotic strange quark stars may be favored over hadronic neutron stars if order costs energy.

Neutron stars tend to be in states of minimum complexity.

The approach constrains the range of possible equations of state.

Abstract

The composition of neutron stars is an issue that has been studied for decades. Yet we do not know exactly what these very compact objects are made of. At this stage of the technological development the best we can do is to constrain the range of equations of state via the mass-radius diagram. From the theoretical point of view the things are not easier. The theory of matter at high density and temperature is not well established. Keeping this in mind we applied the Information Theory as a novel way to restrict the range of possible equations of state for neutron stars. From our results, we conclude that if order costs energy, then nature should favour exotic strange quark stars over the hadronic neutron stars and that there is a trend for the types of compact stars of classified under the nomenclature "neutrons stars" to be at a state of minimum complexity.