Non-equilibrium effects on stability of hybrid stars with first-order phase transitions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how out-of-equilibrium physics affects the stability of hybrid stars with first-order phase transitions, revealing extended stable regions and introducing a new junction condition for oscillation modes.

Contribution

It introduces a reactive junction condition for nonbarotropic stars and demonstrates its role in stabilizing otherwise unstable hybrid star configurations.

Findings

Out-of-equilibrium physics extends stable stellar branches.

Stars with rapid phase transitions can support higher-order multiplets.

The reactive junction condition stabilizes classically unstable stars.

Abstract

The stability of hybrid stars with first-order phase transitions as determined by calculating fundamental radial oscillation modes is known to differ from the predictions of the widely-used Bardeen--Thorne--Meltzer criterion. We consider the effects of out-of-chemical-equilibrium physics on the radial modes and hence stability of these objects. For a barotropic equation of state, this is done by allowing the adiabatic sound speed to differ from the equilibrium sound speed. We show that doing so extends the stable branches of stellar models, allowing stars with rapid phase transitions to support stable higher-order stellar multiplets similarly to stars with multiple slow phase transitions. We also derive a new junction condition to impose on the oscillation modes at the phase transition. Termed the reactive condition, it is physically motivated, consistent with the generalized junction conditions between two phases, and has the common rapid and slow conditions as limiting cases. Unlike the two common cases, it can only be applied to nonbarotropic stars. We apply this junction condition to hybrid stellar models generated using a two-phase equation of state consisting of nuclear matter with unpaired quark matter at high densities joined by a first-order phase transition and show that like in the slow limiting case, stars that are classically unstable are stabilized by a finite chemical reaction speed.