Quarkyonic matter and hadron-quark crossover from an ultracold atom perspective

TL;DR

This paper models the hadron-quark crossover in dense matter using a field-theoretical approach inspired by ultracold atomic physics, explaining key features like the speed of sound peak and baryon momentum-shell structure.

Contribution

It introduces a novel field-theoretical framework drawing an analogy with BEC-BCS crossover to describe the hadron-quark transition.

Findings

Peak in the speed of sound explained by tripling fluctuation effect.

Baryon momentum-shell structure accounted for within the model.

Microscopic derivation of quarkyonic matter model provided.

Abstract

The dense matter equation of state is of great interest due to the recent development of astrophysical observations for neutron stars. A rapid increase in pressure indicates a continuous crossover from a hadron phase to a quark phase without any phase transitions, yet its microscopic mechanism remains elusive. Recently, a peak in the speed of sound and a baryon momentum-shell structure, which are predicted from a quarkyonic matter picture, have been regarded as key features of the hadron-quark crossover. In this work, we explore a field-theoretical framework to describe the hadron-quark crossover, drawing an analogy with the Bose-Einstein condensate to Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BEC-BCS) crossover established in ultracold atomic experiments. Strikingly, a peak in the speed of sound and the baryon momentum-shell structure can simultaneously be explained by the tripling fluctuation effect arising from a different context of quantum many-body physics. We demonstrate these properties in a simplified model and provide a microscopic derivation of the quarkyonic matter model within our field-theoretical framework.