Electrically charged compact stars with an interacting quark equation of state

TL;DR

This study models electrically charged strange quark stars using a QCD-based equation of state, revealing that electric charge can significantly increase the stars' maximum mass and radius.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed numerical analysis of charged quark stars with an interacting equation of state, highlighting the impact of electric charge on stellar properties.

Findings

Stars up to two solar masses can be supported.

Maximum radius and mass increase with charge density.

Electric charge influences the stability and size of quark stars.

Abstract

We investigate the properties of non-rotating, electrically charged strange quark stars in four-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell theory. For quark matter we adopt the well-motivated quantum chromodynamics (QCD) equation-of-state, while for the charge density we assume it is proportional to the mass density. The system of coupled structure equations are integrated numerically, and we compute the mass, the radius as well as the total electric charge of the stars. Moreover, we perform a detailed numerical study of the effect of electric charge using the interacting quark equation-of-state. We find that stars as heavy as two solar masses can be supported, and that the highest radius and highest mass of the stars increase with the charge density.