P-stars in the gravitational wave era

TL;DR

This paper proposes P-stars, a new class of compact stars made of deconfined quarks, which could explain massive pulsars, supernovae, and gravitational wave signals, challenging black hole models.

Contribution

It introduces the theoretical concept of P-stars, supported by QCD simulations, and explores their potential observational signatures in gravitational waves and supernovae.

Findings

P-stars can reach high masses without collapsing into black holes.

P-stars could explain supernova explosion energies up to 10^53 erg.

Gravitational wave signatures from P-star binaries may mimic black hole mergers.

Abstract

P-stars are compact relativistic stars made of deconfined up and down quarks in a chromomagnetic condensate proposed by us long time ago. P-stars do not admit a critical mass thereby they are able to overcome the gravitational collapse to black holes. In this work we discuss in greater details our theoretical proposal for P-stars. We point out that our theory for compact relativistic stars stems from our own understanding of the confining quantum vacuum supported by estensive non-perturbative numerical simulations of Quantum ChromoDynamics on the lattice. We compare our proposal with the constraints arising from the recent observations of massive pulsars, the gravitational event GW170817 and the precise determination of the PSR J0030+0451 mass and radius from NICER data. We argue that core-collapsed supernovae could give rise to a P-star instead of a neutron star. In this case we show that the birth of a P-star could solve the supernova explosion problem leading to successful supernova explosions with total energies up to $10^{53}$ erg. We critically compare P-stars with the gravitational wave event GW170817 and the subsequent electromagnetic follow-up, the short Gamma Ray Burst GRB170817A and the kilonova AT2017gfo. We also present an explorative study on gravitational wave emission from coalescing binary P-stars with masses $M_1 \simeq M_2 \simeq 30 \; M_{\odot}$. We attempt a qualitative comparison with the gravitational wave event GW150914. We find that the gravitational wave strain amplitude from massive P-star binaries could mimic the ringdown gravitational wave emission by coalescing black hole binaries. We point out that a clear signature for massive P-stars would be the detection of wobble frequencies in the gravitational wave strain amplitude in the post-merger phase of two coalescing massive compact objects with unequal masses.