Isospin effect on quark matter instabilities

TL;DR

This paper investigates how isospin asymmetry influences instabilities and phase transitions in quark matter, revealing that symmetry energy and strangeness affect instability regions and supporting a smooth hadron-quark transition in astrophysical objects.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of isospin effects on quark matter instabilities using NJL and pNJL models, highlighting the impact of symmetry energy and strange quarks.

Findings

Instability regions enlarge with higher symmetry energy.

Strangeness presence increases liquid-gas coexistence area.

Light cluster yields are insensitive to isospin uncertainties.

Abstract

We have studied the mechanical and chemical instabilities as well as the liquid-gas-like phase transition in isospin asymmetric quark matter based on the NJL and the pNJL model. Areas of the mechanical instability region and the liquid-gas coexistence region are seen to be enlarged with a larger quark matter symmetry energy or in the presence of strange quarks. Our study shows that the light cluster yield ratio observed in relativistic heavy-ion collisions may not be affected much by the uncertainties of the isospin effect, and favors a smooth hadron-quark phase transition in compact stars as well as their mergers.