Dark matter, neutron stars, and strange quark matter

We show that self-annihilating weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter accreted onto neutron stars may provide a mechanism to seed compact objects with long-lived lumps of strange quark matter, or strangelets, for WIMP masses above a few GeV. This effect may trigger a conversion of most of the star into a strange star. We use an energy estimate for the long-lived strangelet based on the Fermi-gas model combined with the MIT bag model to set a new limit on the possible values of the WIMP mass that can be especially relevant for subdominant species of massive neutralinos.     

Properties of color-flavor locked strange quark matter and strange stars in a new quark mass scaling

Considering the effect of one-gluon-exchange interaction between quarks,the color-flavor locked strange quark matter and strange stars are investigated in a new quark mass density-dependent model.It is found that the color-flavor locked strange quark matter can be more stable if the one-gluon-exchange effect is included.The lower density behavior of the sound velocity in this model is different from the previous results.Moreover,the new equation of state leads to a heavier acceptable maximum mass,supporting the recent observation of a compact star mass as large as about 2 times the solar mass.     

Astrophysical bounds on the properties of strange quark matter

Constraints on the size of the Coulomb barrier and the universal abundance of stable strange quark matter are calculated assuming that the evolution of stars and the nucleosynthesis at stellar sites are not dominated by strange quark matter. The results are applied to find the minimum required beam energy and sensitivity in a heavy ion activation search for strange quark matter in laboratory samples.     

Phase structures of neutral dense quark matter and applicationto strange stars

In the contact interaction model,the quark propagator has only one solution,namely,the chiral symmetry breaking solution,at vanishing temperature and density in the case of physical quark mass.We generalize the condensate feedback onto the coupling strength from the 2 flavor case to the 2+1 flavor case,and find the Wigner solution appears in some regions,which enables us to tackle chiral phase transition as two-phase coexistences.At finite chemical potential,we analyze the chiral phase transition in the conditions of electric charge neutrality andβequilibrium.The four chemical potentials,μ_u,μ_d,μ_s and He,are constrained by three conditions,so that one inde-pendent variable remains:we choose the average quark chemical potential as the free variable.All quark masses and number densities suffer discontinuities at the phase transition point.The strange quarks appear after the phase trans-ition since the system needg more energy to produce a d.-quark than an s-quark.Taking the EOS as an input,the TOV equations are solved numerically,and we show that the mass--radius relation is sensitive to the EOS.The max-imum mass of strange quark stars is not susceptible to the parameter Aq we introduced.     

Bulk viscosity for interacting strange quark matter and r-mode instability windows for strange stars

We investigate the bulk viscosity of strange quark matter in the framework of the equivparticle model,where analytical formulae are obtained for certain temperature ranges,which can be readily applied to those with various quark mass scalings.In the case of adopting a quark mass scaling with both linear confinement and perturbative interactions,the obtained bulk viscosity increases by 1-2 orders of magnitude compared with those in bag model scenarios.Such an enhancement is mainly due to the large quark equivalent masses adopted in the equivparticle model,which are essentially attributed to the strong interquark interactions and are related to the dynamical chiral symmetry breaki ng.Due to the high bulk viscosity,the predicted damping time of oscillatio ns for a can on ical 1.4 M⊙ strange star is less than one millisecond,which is shorter than previous findings.Consequently,the obtained r-mode instability window for the canonical strange stars well accommodates the observational frequencies and temperatures for pulsars in low-mass X-ray binaries(LMXBs).     

Quark core stars,quark stars and strange stars

A recent one flavor (zero temperature) quark matter equation of state is generalized to several flavors. It is shown that quarks undergo a first order phase transition. In addition, this equation of state depends on few parameters, one in the two flavor case, two in the three flavor case, and these parameters can be constrained by phenomenology. This equation of state is then applied to 1) the hadronquark transition in neutron stars and the determination of quark star stability, 2) the investigation of strange matter stability and possible strange star existence.     

密度依赖口袋常数下奇异物质的热力学自洽处理及其对混合星性质的影响

在MTT口袋模型的基础上采用密度依赖口袋常数,给出了奇异夸克物质的热力学关系,并用于描述奇异夸克物质及混合星内的夸克相,研究了奇异星、混合星的性质.结果表明,密度依赖口袋常数下,奇异夸克物质的压强公式中有一个附加项,而能量密度中则没有,从而保证了系统的热力学自洽性.在新的热力学关系下,奇异夸克物质的状态方程变软,相应的奇异星的引力质量和对应的半径均变小;混合星的状态方程也变软,其质量变小,而对应的半径也变小.说明经热力学自洽处理后该模型对中子星的状态方程及相应的质量-半径关系等都有显著的影响.     

Bulk viscosity of strange quark matter

We rederive the bulk viscosity of strange quark matter from the dominant reactionu + s ?d + u by taking the effect of temperature and quark-gluon coupling perturbatively to first order in the chemical composition of the quark matter. We also calculate the contribution from the β-decay processes s(d) →u + e + ¯v andu + e → s(d)+ v and show that this contribution has different temperature dependence and can even be larger than the contribution from the former reaction at temperatures of the order of the electron Fermi energy.     

A realistic model for charged strange quark stars

We report a general approach to solve an Einstein-Maxwell system to describe a static spherically symmetric anisotropic strange matter distribution with linear equation of state in terms of two generating functions.It is examined by choosing Tolmann IV type potential for one of the gravitational potentials and a physically reasonable choice for the electric field. Hence, the generated model satisfies all the required major physical properties of a realistic star. The effect of electric charge on physical properties is highlighted.     

Dark matter heating in strange stars

We study the effect of dark matter heating on the temperature of typical strange star(SS hereafter)(M=1.4 M⊙,R=10 km)in normal phase(NSS hereafter)and in a possible existing colour-flavour locked(CFL)phase(CSS hereafter).For NSS,the influence of dark matter heating is ignored until roughly 107yr.After 107yr,the dark matter heating is dominant that significantly delays the star cooling,which maintains a temperature much higher than that predicted by standard cooling model for old stars.Especially for CSS,the emissivity of dark matter will play a leading role after roughly 104yr,which causes the temperature to rise.This leads to the plateau of surface temperature appearing in～106.5yr which is earlier than that of NSS(～107yr).     

Gluon condensates,quark matter equation of state and quark stars

We consider here quark matter equation of state including strange quarks and taking into account a nontrivial vacuum structure for QCD with gluon condensates. The parameters of condendsate function are determined from minimisation of the thermodynamic potential. The scale parameter of the gluon condensates is fixed from the SVZ parameter in the context of QCD sum rules at zero temperature and zero baryon density. The equation of state for strange matter at zero temperature as derived is used to study quark star structure using Tolman Oppenheimer Volkoff equations. Stable solutions for quark stars are obtained with a large Chandrasekhar limit as 3.2M and radii around 17 kms.     

Bulk viscosity of strange quark matter in density dependent quark mass model

We have studied the bulk viscosity of strange quark matter in the density dependent quark mass model (DDQM) and compared results with calculations done earlier in the MIT bag model where u, d masses were neglected and first order interactions were taken into account. We find that at low temperatures and high relative perturbations, the bulk viscosity is higher by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude while at low perturbations the enhancement is by 1–2 order of magnitude as compared to earlier results. Also the damping time is 2–3 orders of magnitude lower implying that the star reaches stability much earlier than in MIT bag model calculations.     

Magnetized strange quark matter in a mass-density-dependent model

We investigate the properties of strange quark matter (SQM) in a strong magnetic field with quark confinement by the density dependence of quark masses considering the total baryon number conservation, charge neutrality and chemical equilibrium. It is found that an additional term should appear in the pressure expression to maintain thermodynamic consistency. At fixed density, the energy density of magnetized SQM varies with the magnetic field strength. By increasing the field strength an energy minimum exists located at about 6×10¹⁹ Gauss when the density is fixed at two times the normal nuclear saturation density.     

Thermodynamics of strange quark matter with the density-dependent bag constant

The thermodynamics of strange quark matter with density dependent bag constant are studied self-consistently in the framework of the general ensemble theory and the MIT bag model.In our treatment,an additional term is found in the expression of pressure.With the additional term,the zero pressure locates exactly at the lowest energy state,indicating that our treatment is a self-consistently thermodynamic treatment.The self-consistent equations of state of strange quark matter in both the normal and color-fla...