Topology and emergent symmetries in dense compact star matter

TL;DR

This paper explores how topology effects and emergent symmetries at high density influence the structure of dense star matter, proposing a unified effective theory that explains novel phenomena like early conformal sound velocity and fractional baryon quasiparticles.

Contribution

It introduces the generalized nuclear effective theory (G$n$EFT) incorporating topology change and emergent symmetries, providing new insights into dense nuclear matter and neutron star properties.

Findings

Topology change at >2$n_0$ density suggests hadron-quark continuity.

Early appearance of conformal sound velocity in star cores.

Fractional baryon charge quasiparticles dominate in massive star cores.

Abstract

It has been found that the topology effect and the possible emergent scale and hidden local flavor symmetries at high density reveal a novel structure of the compact star matter. The $N_f\geq2$ baryons can be described by the skyrmion in the large $N_c$ limit and there is a robust topology change in the skyrmion matter approach to dense nuclear matter. The hidden scale and local flavor symmetries which are sources introducing the lightest scalar meson -- dilaton -- and lowest lying vector mesons into to nonlinear chiral effective theory are seen to play important roles in understanding the nuclear force. We review in this paper the generalized nuclear effective theory (G$n$EFT), which applicable to nuclear matter from low density to the compact star density, constructed with the robust conclusion from the topology approach to dense matter and emergent scale and hidden local flavor symmetries. The topology change at density larger than two times saturation density $n_0$ encoded in the parameters of the effective field theory is interpreted as the hadron-quark continuity in the sense of Cheshire Cat Principle. A novel feature predicted in this theory that has not been found before is the precocious appearance of the conformal sound velocity in the cores of massive stars, although the trace of the energy-momentum tensor of the system is not zero. That is, in contrast to the usual picture, the cores of massive stars are composed of quasiparticles of fractional baryon charges, neither baryons nor deconfined quarks. Hidden scale and local flavor symmetries emerge and give rise a resolution of the longstanding $g_A$ quench problem in nuclei transition. To illustrate the rationality of the GnEFT, we finally confront the generalized effective field theory to the global properties of neutron star and the data from gravitational wave detections.