We study the properties of strange quark stars by employing a 3-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with both scalar-isovector and vector-isovector interactions. Using the constraint on the vector-isoscalar interaction strength obtained from the elliptic flow splitting between particles and their antiparticles in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, we investigate the dependence of the properties of strange quark stars on the vector-isovector and the scalar-isovector interactions, and compare the results with the state-of-art astrophysical constraints on the compact star radius and mass as well as its tidal deformability from the GW170817 event. Results from our study reinforce the prospect of using both heavy-ion collisions and astrophysical observations to provide constraints on the isovector coupling strength in quark matter and thus the quark matter equation of state as well as the QCD phase structure at finite isospin chemical potentials.
The deconfinement phase transition from hadronic matter to quark matter in the interior of compact stars is investigated. The hadronic phase is described in the framework of relativistic mean-field (RMF) theory, when also the scalar-isovector delta-meson effective field is taken into account. The MIT bag model for describing a quark phase is used. The changes of the parameters of phase transition caused by the presence of delta-meson field are explored. Finally, alterations in the integral and structural parameters of hybrid stars due to both deconfinement phase transition and inclusion of del…
We have studied the properties of hot and dense quark matter based on the 3-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model as well as its Polyakov-loop extension (pNJL) with scalar-isovector and vector-isovector couplings. Provided a considerable large isospin asymmetry or isospin chemical potential, isospin splittings of constituent mass, chiral phase transition boundary, and critical point for $u$ and $d$ quarks can be observed for positive isovector coupling constants but are suppressed for negative ones. The quark matter symmetry energy decreases with the increasing isovector coupling constant, and…
In the framework of the relativistic mean-field theory, we have considered the equation of state of superdense nuclear matter, taking into account an effective scalar-isovector delta-meson field. The effect of the delta-meson field on the characteristics of a Maxwell-type quark phase transition has been studied. The quark phase is described with the aid of the improved version of the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) bag model, in which interactions between the u, d, s quarks inside the bag are taken into account in the one-gluon exchange approximation. For different values of the ba…
We present a complete analysis of the chiral extrapolation of lattice moments of all twist-2 isovector quark distributions, including corrections from N pi and Delta pi loops. Even though the Delta resonance formally gives rise to higher order non-analytic structure, the coefficients of the higher order terms for the helicity and transversity moments are large and cancel much of the curvature generated by the wave function renormalization. The net effect is that, whereas the unpolarized moments exhibit considerable curvature, the polarized moments show little deviation from linearity as the ch…
We examine the effects of the isovector-vector coupling and hypercharge-vector coupling in quark matter on hadron-quark coexistence in neutron-star matter. The relativistic mean field theory with the TM1 parameter set and an extended TM1 parameter set are used to describe hadronic matter, and the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with scalar, isoscalar-vector, isovector-vector and hypercharge-vector couplings is used to describe deconfined quark matter. The hadron-quark phase transition is constructed via the Gibbs conditions for phase equilibrium. The isovector-vector and hypercharge-vector couplings …
The non-relativistic approximation of the quark-meson-coupling model has been discussed and compared with the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock model which includes spin exchanges. Calculations show that the spin-exchange interaction has important effect on the descriptions of finite nuclei and nuclear matter through the Fock exchange. Also in the quark-meson-coupling model, it is the Fock exchange that leads to a nonlinear density-dependent isovector channel and changes the density-dependent behavior of the symmetry energy.
We analyze the impact of several multi-quark interaction channels on the properties of hybrid stars. Four and eight vector interactions were included in the $SU(3)$ NJL model to describe the quark matter, and all vector like interactions were investigated. The hybrid stars were built starting from an hadronic EoS that satisfy presently accepted nuclear matter properties and considering the quark model constrained by the vacuum properties of several light mesons. The interplay between the 8-quark vector interaction and the 4-quark isovector-vector interaction determine the size of the quark cor…
Background: The Skyrme energy density functional is widely used in mean-field calculations of nuclear structure and dynamics. However, its reliance on phenomenology may compromise its isovector properties and its performance for exotic nuclear systems. Purpose: This work investigates the possibility of removing some phenomenology from the density functional by drawing on the high-energy degrees-of-freedom of the quark-meson coupling (QMC) model. The QMC model has microscopically derived isovector properties and far fewer adjustable parameters. Method: The parameters of the Skyrme interaction a…
The possible existence of compact stars made of absolutely stable strange quark matter--referred to as strange stars--was pointed out by E. Witten almost a quarter of a century ago. One of the most amazing features of such objects concerns the possible existence of ultra-strong electric fields on their surfaces, which, for ordinary strange matter, is around $10^{18}$ V/cm. If strange matter forms a color superconductor, as expected for such matter, the strength of the electric field may increase to values that exceed $10^{19}$ V/cm. The energy density associated with such huge electric fields …
We calculate the equation of state of strange quark matter and the interior structure of strange quark stars in a Dyson-Schwinger quark model within rainbow or Ball-Chiu vertex approximation. We emphasize constraints on the parameter space of the model due to stability conditions of ordinary nuclear matter. Respecting these constraints, we find that the maximum mass of strange quark stars is about 1.9 solar masses, and typical radii are 9 --11 km. We obtain an energy release as large as $3.6 \times 10^{53}\,\text{erg}$ from conversion of neutron stars into strange quark stars.
A quark model with running coupling and running strange quark mass, which is thermodynamically self-consistent at both high and lower densities, is presented and applied to study properties of strange quark matter and structure of compact stars. An additional term to the thermodynamic potential density is determined by meeting the fundamental differential equation of thermodynamics. It plays an important role in comparatively lower density and ignorable at extremely high density, acting as a chemical-potential dependent bag constant. In this thermodynamically enhanced perturbative QCD model, s…
The confining quark matter (CQM) model, in which the confinement and asymptotic freedom are modeled via the Richardson potential for quark-quark vector interaction and the chiral symmetry restoration at high density is described by the density dependent quark mass, is extended to include isospin dependence of the quark mass. Within this extended isospin-dependent confining quark matter (ICQM) model, we study the properties of strange quark matter and quark stars. We find that including isospin dependence of the quark mass can significantly influence the quark matter symmetry energy, the stabil…
The effect of magnetic field on the structure properties of hot spin polarized strange quark stars has been investigated. For this purpose, we use the MIT bag model with a density dependent bag constant to calculate the thermodynamic properties of spin polarized strange quark matter such as energy and equation of state. We see that the energy and equation of state of strange quark matter changes significantly in a strong magnetic field. Finally, using our equation of state, we compute the structure of spin polarized strange quark star at different temperatures and magnetic fields.
In this article, we explore the cooling of isolated quark stars. These objects are structured of a homogeneous quark matter core and crusted by matter. To do this, we adopt two kinds of crust: (i) a crust made of purely nuclear matter following the Baym-Pethick-Sutherland (BPS) equation of state (EoS) and (ii) a crust made of nuggets of strange quark matter (strangelets). Both models have the same quark matter core described by the MIT bag model EoS. Our main purpose is to quantify the effects of a strangelet crust on the cooling and relaxation times of these strange stars. We also perform a t…
We study the equation of state of neutron-star matter including the effects of isovector-vector coupling in quark matter. We employ the relativistic mean-field theory with an extended TM1 parameter set to describe hadronic matter and the SU(3) Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with isovector-vector and hypercharge-vector couplings to describe the quark matter. The deconfinement hadron-quark phase transition is constructed under Gibbs phase equilibrium conditions. It is found that the isovector-vector and hypercharge-vector couplings in quark matter enhance the symmetry energy and hypercharge symmetry e…
We propose a model of clustered u-d-s quark matter that leads to stable bulk strange quark matter. We discuss qualitatively consequences of impacts by sub-planetary mass strangelets on rocky solar system bodies.
We discuss the possible existence of absolutely stable strange quark matter within three different types of chiral models. We will show that confinement plays a crucial role in determining the conditions for the Bodmer-Witten hypothesis to hold true. We discuss also which are the phenomenological signatures, related to measurements of masses and radii of compact stars, which would prove the existence of strange quark stars.
An isovector-scalar meson is incorporated self-consistently into the quark-meson coupling description of nuclear matter and its most prominent effects on the structure of neutron stars are investigated. The recent measurement of GW170817 is used to constrain the strength of the isovector-scalar channel. With the imminent measurements of the neutron star radii in the NICER mission it is particularly notable that the inclusion of the isovector-scalar force has a significant impact. Indeed, the effect of this interaction on the neutron star radii and masses is larger than the uncertainties introd…
The chiral quark model describes the strangeness components of the light quarks as fluctuations into strange mesons and quarks. The single strange pseudoscalar and vector meson loop fluctuations of the constituent $u$- and $d$-quarks give rise to only very small strangeness form factors for the proton. This result is in line with recent experimental results, given their wide uncertainty range.
We present a detailed Lattice QCD study of the unpolarized isovector quark Parton Distribution Function (PDF) using large-momentum effective theory framework. We choose a quasi-PDF defined by a spatial correlator which is free from mixing with other operators of the same dimension. In the lattice simulation, we use a Gaussian-momentum-smeared source at $M_π=356$ MeV and $P_z \in \{1.8,2.3\}$ GeV. To control the systematics associated with the excited states, we explore {five different source-sink separations}. The nonperturbative renormalization is conducted in a regularization-independent mom…
The isospin breaking in the nucleon isovector axial charge, $g_A^3$, are calculated within the external field QCD sum-rule approach. The isospin violations arising from the difference in up and down current quark masses and in up and down quark condensates are included; electromagnetic effects are not considered. We find $δg^3_A/g^3_A \approx (0.5-1.0)\times 10^{-2}$, where $δg^3_A = (g^3_A)_p + (g^3_A)_n$ and $ g^3_A = [(g^3_A)_p - (g^3_A)_n]/2$. Using the Goldberger-Treiman relation, we also obtain an estimate of the isospin breaking in the pion-nucleon coupling constant, $(g_{ppπ_0}-g_{nnπ_…
The properties of strange quark matter at zero temperature are investigated including medium effects. The quarks are considered as quasiparticles which acquire an effective mass generated by the interaction with the other quarks of the dense system. Within this approach we find that these medium effects reduce the binding energy of strange quark matter with respect to $^{56}Fe$.
I review recent theory progress reported at the 19th International Conference on Strangeness in Quark Matter (SQM), and discuss open questions to be addressed by the coming editions of SQM.
Bulk properties of strange quark matter (SQM) are investigated within the SU(3) Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. In the chiral limit the model behaves very similarly to the MIT bag model which is often used to describe SQM. However, when we introduce realistic current quark masses, the strange quark becomes strongly disfavored, because of its large dynamical mass. We conclude that SQM is not absolutely stable.
We present results from a lattice QCD study of nucleon matrix elements at vanishing momentum transfer for local and twist-2 isovector operator insertions. Computations are performed on gauge ensembles with non-perturbatively improved $N_f=2+1$ Wilson fermions, covering four values of the lattice spacing and pion masses down to $M_π\approx200$MeV. Several source-sink separations (typically ~1.0fm to ~1.5fm) allow us to assess excited-state contamination. Results on individual ensembles are obtained from simultaneous two-state fits across all observables and all available source-sink separations…
Rapidity dependent strangeness enhancement factors for the identified particles have been studied with the help of a string based hadronic transport model UrQMD-3.3 (Ultra-relativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics) at FAIR energies. A strong rapidity dependent strangeness enhancement could be observed with our generated data for $Au + Au$ collisions at the beam energy of 30\textit{A} GeV. The strangeness enhancement is found to be maximum at mid-rapidity for the particles containing leading quarks while for particles consisting of produced quarks only, the situation is seen to be otherwise. Such…
We investigate the properties of strange quark matter at zero temperature including medium effects. The quarks are considered as quasiparticles which acquire an effective mass generated by the interaction with the other quarks of the dense system. The effective quark masses are derived from the zero momentum limit of the dispersion relations following from an effective quark propagator obtained from resumming one-loop self energy diagrams in the hard dense loop approximation. This leads to a thermodynamic selfconsistent description of strange quark matter as an ideal Fermi gas of quasiparticle…
The relativistic interacting quark-diquark model, constructed in the framework of point form dynamics, is extended to strange baryons. The strange and nonstrange baryon spectra are calculated and compared with the experimental data.
The parton and hadron cascade model PACIAE based on PYTHIA was utilized to systematically investigate the strange particle production in pp collisions at the RHIC and LHC energies. Taking the mechanism of reduction of the strange quark suppression into account the STAR and ALICE data of strange particle production in pp collisions are well reproduced. It turned out that the K/π ratio as a function of reaction energy in pp collisions shows slightly increasing from sqrt(s)=0.2 to 0.9 TeV and then turning to saturation.
Motivated by some recent cosmic ray experiments we study the properties of strange quark matter near flavour equilibrium. Using Fermi-gas model we argue that, contrary to some claims, the geometrical radii of quark matter strangelets are not smaller but rather comparable to those of ordinary nuclei. We propose therefore a scenario of propagation of strangelets through the atmosphere which still allows for their deep penetration.
A pedagogical overview of strange quark matter and strange stars is presented. After a historical notation of the research and an introduction to quark matter, a major part is devoted to the physics and astrophysics of strange stars, with attention being paid to the possible ways by which neutron stars and strange stars can be distinguished in astrophysics. Recent possible evidence for bare strange stars is also discussed.
The strange vector form factors are evaluated for $Q^2=0$ and $Q^2=1\ \mbox{GeV}^2$ in the framework of the SU(3) chiral quark-soliton model (or semi-bosonized SU(3) Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model). The rotational $1/N_c$ and $m_s$ corrections are taken into account up to linear order. The mean-square strange radius $\langle r^{2}\rangle^{Sachs}_{s}=-0.35\; \mbox{fm}^2$ and the strange magnetic moment $μ_s = -0.44\;μ_N$ are obtained. The results are compared with several different models.
A new method is proposed to compute the bulk viscosity in strange quark matter at high densities. Using the method it is straightforward to prove that the bulk viscosity is positive definite, which is not so easy to accomplish in other approaches especially for multi-component fluids like strange quark matter with light up and down quarks and massive strange quarks.
Motivated by the need for a solid state strange quark matter to better explain some observational phenomena, we discussed possibility of color singlet cluster formation in cold strange quark matter by a rough calculation following the excluded volume method proposed by Clark et al (1986) and adopted quark mass density dependent model with cubic scaling. It is found that 70% to 75% of volume and 80% to 90% of baryon number is in clusters at temperature from 10MeV to 50MeV and 1 to 10 times nuclear density.
The strange sea quarks distributions of nucleons obtained by two global analyses based on available structure function data of muon and neutrino deep inelastic scatterings are different from the strange sea quark distribution measured by the CCFR Collaboration from dimuon events in neutrino scattering. We discuss possible contributions to this discrepancy from the nuclear shadowing in the deuteron and from the isospin symmetry breaking in the sea between the neutron and the proton.
Analyses on possible systematics in some isovector nucleon observables in the RBC+UKQCD 2+1-flavor dynamical domain-wall fermion (DWF) lattice-QCD are presented. The vector charge, axial charge, quark momentum and helicity fractions, and transversity are discussed using mainly the Iwasaki\(\times\)DSDR ensemble at pion mass of 170 MeV. No autocorrelation issue is observed in the vector charge and quark momentum and helicity fractions. Blocked Jack-knife analyses expose significant growth of estimated error for the axial charge with increasing block sizes that are similar to or larger than the …
Hybrid stars with a quark phase described by the Nambu$-$Jona-Lasinio model are studied. The hadron-quark model used to determine the stellar matter equation of state favors the appearance of quark matter: the coincidence of the deconfinement and chiral transitions and a low vacuum constituent quark mass. These two properties are essential to build equations of state that predict pure quark matter in the center of neutron stars. The effect of vector-isoscalar and vector-isovector terms is discussed, and it is shown that the vector-isoscalar terms are necessary to describe 2$M_\odot$ hybrid sta…
The mean charge sum rule for the light sea quarks in the nucleon which holds under the same theoretical footing as the modified Gottfried sum rule shows that a usual parameterization of the strange sea quark distribution underestimate its contribution in the small $x$ region. We give a discussion of the soft pion contribution at high energy as a possible explanation of the saturation of the sum rule and show that it naturally explains why the strange sea quark is suppressed in the region above $x \sim 0.01$ while it becomes abundant below it.
The previous thermodynamic treatment for models with density and/or temperature dependent quark masses is shown to be inconsistent with the requirement of fundamental thermodynamics. We therefore study a fully self-consistent one according to the fundamental differential equation of thermodynamics. After obtaining a new quark mass scaling with the inclusion of both confinement and leading-order perturbative interactions, we investigate properties of strange quark matter in the fully consistent thermodynamic treatment. It is found that the equation of state become stiffer, and accordingly, the …
By means of the quark mass density- and temperature- dependent model, it is found that the negative charge and the higher strangeness fraction are in favor of the stability of strange quark matter at finite temperature. A critical baryon number density n_Bc has been found. The strange quark matter is unstable when n_B < n_Bc. The charge and strangeness fraction dependence of stability for strange quark matter is addressed.
Based upon the analogy to the electroweak phase diagram, I propose that in QCD there might be a critical line for a superfluid transition, in the plane of chemical potential and temperature. The order parameter has the quantum numbers of the H-dibaryon, but the transition is driven by color superconductivity in strange quark matter.
Electric and color neutral solutions, and the critical conditions for the formation of gapless color superconductors, are investigated in $K^0$ condensed color-flavor locked quark matter for nonzero strange quark mass. We show that as the strange quark mass increases, gapless modes for up-strange quark pairing occur first, followed by down-strange quark pairing. The behavior of the gaps, the dispersion relations, and the thermodynamic potential are all found as functions of the strange quark mass on the basis of a Nambu Jona-Lasinio type model. To a high degree of accuracy, they are presented …
At ultra-high density, matter is expected to form a degenerate Fermi gas of quarks in which there is a condensate of Cooper pairs of quarks near the Fermi surface: color superconductivity. In these proceedings I review some of the underlying physics, and discuss outstanding questions about the phase structure of ultra-dense quark matter.
We investigate the transverse quark spin densities of the nucleon with the lowest moment within the framework of the SU(3) chiral quark-soliton model, emphasizing the strange quark spin density. Based on previous results of the vector and tensor form factors, we are able to determine the impact-parameter dependent probability densities of transversely polarized quarks in an unpolarized nucleon as well as those of unpolarized quarks in a transversely polarized nucleon. We find that the present numerical results for the transverse spin densities of the up and down quarks are in good agreement wi…
It is shown that extremely strong electric fields may be generated at the surface of strange quark matter in the color-flavor locked phase because of the surface effects. Some properties of strange stars made of this matter are briefly discussed.
A neutron or proton excess in nuclei leads to an isovector-vector mean-field which, through its coupling to the quarks in a bound nucleon, implies a shift in the quark distributions with respect to the Bjorken scaling variable. We show that this result leads to an additional correction to the NuTeV measurement of sin^2(Theta_W). The sign of this correction is largely model independent and acts to reduce their result. Explicit calculation within a covariant and confining Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model predicts that this vector field correction accounts for approximately two-thirds of the NuTeV anoma…
For a new equation of state of strange quark matter, we construct equilibrium sequences of rapidly rotating strange stars in general relativity. The sequences are the normal and supramassive evolutionary sequences of constant rest mass. We also calculate equilibrium sequences for a constant value of $Ω$ corresponding to the most rapidly rotating pulsar PSR 1937 + 21. In addition to this, we calculate the radius of the marginally stable orbit and its dependence on $Ω$, relevant for modeling of kilo-Hertz quasi-periodic oscillations in X-ray binaries.
I reply to A. Mitra's comment on my PRL paper "Bare quark matter surfaces of strange stars and $e^+e^-$ emission". I show that his points of criticism are not correct.
The properties of finite lumps of strange quark matter (strangelets) with emphasis on the two scenarios of producing strange matter in relativistic heavy ion collisions are summarized. As an outlook, the possibility of short-lived strange composites and charmed matter are discussed for coming heavy ion experiments.
The nucleon strange and anti-strange distribution asymmetry is an important issue in the study of the nucleon structure. In this work, we show that the heavy quark recombination processes from a perturbative QCD picture can give a sizable influence on the measurement of the nucleon strangeness asymmetry from charged-current charm production processes, such as the CCFR and NuTeV dimuon measurements. When the influence of heavy quark recombination is considered, a positive effective $δS^-_{\mathrm{HR}}$ should be added to the initially extracted strangeness asymmetry $S^-\equiv\int dx[s(x)-\bar …
We give an overview of some results presented at the Strange Quark Matter 2011 conference in Krakow, and interpret them in light of the search of the search for a QCD deconfinement phase transition in heavy ion collisions
Strange quark matter could be found in the core of neutron stars or forming strange quark stars. As is well known, these astrophysical objects are endowed with strong magnetic fields which affect the microscopic properties of matter and modify the macroscopic properties of the system. In this paper we study the role of a strong magnetic field in the thermodynamical properties of a magnetized degenerate strange quark gas, taking into account beta-equilibrium and charge neutrality. Quarks and electrons interact with the magnetic field via their electric charges and anomalous magnetic moments. In…
The helicity-dependent strange quark distribution in the proton, $Δs$, is calculated in a nonlocal chiral SU(3) effective field theory. The hadronic proton to meson plus octet or decuplet baryon splitting functions are derived at the one-loop level, with loop integrals rendered finite by correlation functions introduced in the nonlocal Lagrangian. Within the convolution framework, the proton strange helicity distribution is obtained using spin-flavor symmetry to constrain the input valence quark distributions in the hadronic intermediate states. The polarized strange quark distribution is foun…
We present a new technique for observing the strange quark matter distillation process based on unlike particle correlations. A simulation is presented based on the scenario of a two-phase thermodynamical evolution model.
