Massive neutron stars with holographic multiquark cores

TL;DR

This paper explores the possibility of massive neutron stars with cores composed of holographically modeled multiquark matter, showing such cores can explain observed high-mass neutron stars.

Contribution

It introduces a holographic multiquark matter model to describe neutron star cores, extending previous models and matching high-density equations of state with nuclear matter at low densities.

Findings

Neutron stars with multiquark cores can reach masses up to 2.23 solar masses.

The model predicts radii between 11.8 and 14.3 km for these massive neutron stars.

Proton-baryon fractions can slightly decrease the neutron star radius.

Abstract

Phases of nuclear matter are crucial in the determination of physical properties of neutron stars~(NS). In the core of NS, the density and pressure become so large that the nuclear matter possibly undergoes phase transition into a deconfined phase, consisting of quarks and gluons and their colour bound states. Even though the quark-gluon plasma has been observed in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions\cite{Gyulassy, Andronic}, it is still unclear whether exotic quark matter exists inside neutron stars. Recent results from the combination of various perturbative theoretical calculations with astronomical observations\cite{Demorest, Antoniadis} shows that (exotic) quark matter could exist inside the cores of neutron stars above 2.0 solar masses ($M_{\odot}$)~\cite{Annala:2019puf}. We revisit the holographic model in Ref.~\cite{bch, bhp} and implement the equation of states~(EoS) of multiquark nuclear matter to interpolate the pQCD EoS in the high-density region with the nuclear EoS known at low densities. For sufficiently large energy density scale~($\epsilon_{s}$) of the model, it is found that multiquark phase is thermodynamically prefered than the stiff nuclear matter above the transition points. The NS with holographic multiquark core could have masses in the range $1.96-2.23~(1.64-2.10) M_{\odot}$ and radii $14.3-11.8~(14.0-11.1)$ km for $\epsilon_{s}=26~(28)$ GeV/fm$^{3}$ respectively. Effects of proton-baryon fractions are studied for certain type of baryonic EoS; larger proton fractions could reduce radius of the NS with multiquark core by less than a kilometer.