Chiral restoration of strange baryons

TL;DR

This paper reviews a phenomenological model for cold, dense nuclear matter that explores chiral phase transition effects, including strangeness, in neutron star conditions without explicitly adding quark degrees of freedom.

Contribution

It introduces a model for quark-hadron phase transition in neutron stars that incorporates strangeness via hyperons, avoiding explicit quark degrees of freedom.

Findings

Model captures chiral phase transition in dense matter.

Includes strangeness through hyperonic degrees of freedom.

Potential to study surface tension and inhomogeneous phases.

Abstract

We review the results of a phenomenological model for cold and dense nuclear matter exhibiting a chiral phase transition. The idea is to model the quark-hadron phase transition under neutron star conditions within a single model, but without adding quark degrees of freedom by hand. To this end, strangeness is included in the form of hyperonic degrees of freedom, whose light counterparts provide the strangeness in the chirally restored phase. In the future, the model can be used for instance to compute the surface tension at the (first-order) chiral phase transition and to study the possible existence of inhomogeneous phases.