Chiral condensates for neutron stars in hadron-quark crossover: from a parity doublet nucleon model to an NJL quark model

TL;DR

This paper investigates chiral condensates in neutron star matter across nuclear and quark phases using a combined model approach, revealing a smooth transition with significant implications for understanding dense matter physics.

Contribution

It introduces a method to interpolate nuclear and quark matter equations of state, constrained by observations, to study chiral condensates in neutron stars.

Findings

Chiral condensates remain substantial up to 2-3 times nuclear saturation density.

The transition involves two distinct chiral restoration mechanisms.

Predictions align with NJL model at high densities.

Abstract

We study the chiral condensates in neutron star matter from nuclear to quark matter domain. We describe nuclear matter with a parity doublet model (PDM), quark matter with the Nambu--Jona-Lasino (NJL) model, and a matter at the intermediate density by interpolating nuclear and quark matter equations of state. The model parameters are constrained by nuclear physics and neutron star observations. Various condensates in the interpolated domain are estimated from the chemical potential dependence of the condensates at the boundaries of the interpolation. The use of the PDM with substantial chiral invariant mass ($m_0 \gtrsim 500$ MeV, which is favored by the neutron star observations) predicts the mild chiral restoration, and the significant chiral condensate remains to baryon density $n_B \sim 2-3n_0$ ($n_0\simeq 0.16\,{\rm fm}^{-3}$: nuclear saturation density), smoothly approaching the NJL predictions for the color-flavor-locked phase at $n_B \gtrsim 5n_0$. The same method is applied to estimate diquark condensates, number densities of up-, down- and strange-quarks, and the lepton fraction. In our descriptions the chiral restoration in the interpolated domain proceeds with two conceptually distinct chiral restoration effects; the first is associated with the positive scalar density in a nucleon, relevant in dilute regime, and the other primarily arises from the modification of the quark Dirac sea, which is triggered by the growth of the quark Fermi sea. We discuss several qualitative conjectures to interpolate the microphysics in nuclear and quark matter.