Continuity of vortices from the hadronic to the color-flavor locked phase in dense matter

TL;DR

This paper investigates how vortices in dense superfluid hadronic matter can seamlessly connect to vortices in superfluid quark matter within neutron stars, highlighting the potential for continuous vortex structures across phase transitions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that singly quantized vortices in hadronic matter can smoothly transition into non-Abelian vortices in the CFL phase without requiring boojums, advancing understanding of matter continuity.

Findings

Singly quantized hadronic vortices connect smoothly to non-Abelian CFL vortices.

No boojums are necessary at the hadron-quark transition.

Supports the concept of quark-hadron continuity in dense matter.

Abstract

We study how vortices in dense superfluid hadronic matter can connect to vortices in superfluid quark matter, as in rotating neutron stars, focusing on the extent to which quark-hadron continuity can be maintained. As we show, a singly quantized vortex in three-flavor symmetric hadronic matter can connect smoothly to a singly quantized non-Abelian vortex in three-flavor symmetric quark matter in the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase, without the necessity for boojums appearing at the transition.