A finite temperature framework for quark matter with color-superconducting phases

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new finite-temperature framework for modeling the thermal equation of state of dense quark matter, especially in color-superconducting phases, to aid neutron star and gravitational wave research.

Contribution

The authors develop and validate a finite-temperature modeling framework for dense quark matter based on cold EoS, suitable for numerical relativity simulations.

Findings

Framework accurate to a few percent up to T~50 MeV

Validates against NJL mean-field calculations with multiple phases

Effective for modeling thermal effects in dense quark matter

Abstract

Current observations of neutron stars and measurements of gravitational waves only provide constraints on the zero temperature ($T=0$) equation of state (EoS) of dense matter. The detection of the post-merger gravitational-wave signal from a binary neutron star merger would additionally provide access to finite-temperature properties of the EoS which contain more information about the composition and the interactions of dense matter than the cold EoS alone. In particular deconfined quark matter may be probed by its characteristic finite temperature effects. This is especially the case for color-superconducting phases, in which the quasiparticle contribution to the thermal pressure is exponentially suppressed at low temperatures. Here we develop a new finite $T$ framework to model the thermal EoS for dense quark matter based on the cold quark matter EoS which is useful for numerical relativity simulations. We test the validity of the framework against a three-flavor NJL mean-field calculation, both with and without diquark pairing. We find that even for the complicated phase diagram of the NJL model including multiple different phases the framework is accurate to the few percent level for temperatures up to $T\sim 50\,$MeV.