Holographic quark matter and neutron stars

TL;DR

This paper employs a holographic model to analyze quark matter in neutron stars, revealing a phase transition at high densities and predicting no quark matter presence inside these stars, with masses exceeding two solar masses.

Contribution

It introduces a top-down holographic approach to model quark matter in neutron stars and integrates it with nuclear matter results to study phase transitions and stellar properties.

Findings

First order phase transition at 2-7 times nuclear saturation density

Maximal neutron star mass exceeds two solar masses

No quark matter predicted inside neutron stars

Abstract

We use a top-down holographic model for strongly interacting quark matter to study the properties of neutron stars. When the corresponding Equation of State (EoS) is matched with state-of-the-art results for dense nuclear matter, we consistently observe a first order phase transition at densities between two and seven times the nuclear saturation density. Solving the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkov equations with the resulting hybrid EoSs, we find maximal stellar masses in the excess of two solar masses, albeit somewhat smaller than those obtained with simple extrapolations of the nuclear matter EoSs. Our calculation predicts that no quark matter exists inside neutron stars.