The shear viscosity of two-flavor crystalline color superconducting quark matter

TL;DR

This paper calculates the shear viscosity of two-flavor crystalline color superconducting quark matter, revealing significantly reduced viscosity compared to unpaired matter, with implications for neutron star dynamics.

Contribution

First calculation of shear viscosity in two-flavor crystalline color superconducting quark matter, highlighting the role of gapless excitations and gluon screening.

Findings

Shear viscosity is about 100 times smaller than in unpaired quark matter.

Gapless excitations on crescent-shaped surfaces contribute to transport.

Dynamic screening of gluons affects quark scattering mechanisms.

Abstract

We present the first calculation of the shear viscosity for two-flavor plane wave (FF) color superconducting quark matter. This is a member of the family of crystalline color superconducting phases of dense quark matter that may be present in the cores of neutron stars. The paired quarks in the FF phase feature gapless excitations on surfaces of crescent shaped blocking regions in momentum space and participate in transport. We calculate their contribution to the shear viscosity. We note that they also lead to dynamic screening of transverse $t^1$, $t^2$, $t^3$ gluons which are undamped in the 2SC phase. The exchange of these gluons is the most important mechanism of the scattering of the paired quarks. We find that the shear viscosity of the paired quarks is roughly a factor of $100$ smaller compared to the shear viscosity of unpaired quark matter. Our results may have implications for the damping of $r-$modes in rapidly rotating, cold neutron stars.