Conformality and percolation threshold in neutron stars

TL;DR

This paper investigates the behavior of the speed of sound and trace anomaly in neutron stars, revealing their approach to conformal values at maximum mass and linking peaks in sound speed to deconfinement and percolation in QCD matter.

Contribution

It provides a statistical analysis connecting the speed of sound and trace anomaly to conformality and deconfinement in neutron star cores, highlighting their significance in dense matter physics.

Findings

Speed of sound approaches conformal limit at neutron star centers.

Trace anomaly also tends to conformal values in the core.

Peak in sound speed correlates with deconfinement and percolation conditions.

Abstract

Speed of sound is given attention in multi-messenger astronomy as it encodes information of the dense matter equation of state. Recently the trace anomaly was proposed as a more informative quantity. In this work, we statistically determine the speed of sound and trace anomaly and show that they are driven to their conformal values at the centers of maximally massive neutron stars. We show that the local peak in the speed of sound can be associated with deconfinement along with percolation conditions in QCD matter.