| Abstract: | Quarks are proposed to be grouped together to make quark-clusters due to the strong interaction in cold quark matter at a few nuclear densities, because a weakly coupling treatment of the interaction between quarks there would be inadequate. Cold quark matter is then conjectured to be in solid state (i.e., forming a crystal structure) if the inter-cluster potential is deep enough to localize clusters in lattice. Such a solid state of cold quark matter would be very necessary for us to understand different manifestations of pulsar-like compact stars, and could not be ruled by first principles. |
