Scale-Chiral Symmetry, Proton Mass and Sound Velocity in Compact-Star Matter

TL;DR

This paper develops a scale-invariant effective field theory incorporating a dilaton and vector mesons to describe high-density nuclear matter, revealing emergent symmetries and predicting neutron star properties consistent with observations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel scale-invariant hidden local symmetric Lagrangian capturing emergent scale-chiral symmetry at high density, with implications for neutron star structure.

Findings

Identification of a topology change at high density

Prediction of neutron star maximum mass around 2 solar masses

Sound velocity approaching 1/3 of the speed of light

Abstract

With a light dilaton $\sigma$ and the light-quark vector mesons $V=(\rho,\omega)$ incorporated into an effective scale-invariant hidden local symmetric Lagrangian, scale-chiral symmetry -- hidden in QCD -- arises at a high density, $n_{1/2}$, as an "emergent" symmetry, a phenomenon absent in standard chiral perturbative approaches but highly relevant for massive compact stars. What takes place as the density increases beyond $n_{1/2}\sim 2n_0$ in compressed baryonic matter is (1) a topology change from skyrmions to half-skyrmions, (2) parity doubling in the nucleon structure, (3) the maximum neutron star mass $M\simeq 2.01 M_{\odot}$ and the radius $R\simeq 12.0$ km and (4) the sound velocity $v_s^2/c^2\simeq 1/3$ due to the "vector manifestation (VM)" fixed point of $\rho$ and a "walking" dilaton condensate, which is intricately connected to the source of the proton mass.