No Access

QUARK MATTER NUCLEATION AT NEUTRON STAR CORES: RELEVANCE OF ENERGY-DENSITY FLUCTUATIONS

Universidade Federal do ABC, Centro de Ciências Naturais e Humanas, Rua Santa Adélia 166, 09210-170, Santo André, Brazil

Search for more papers by this author

and

ANA G. GRUNFELD

Sultan Qaboos University, P.O.Box: 36 Al-Khode 123 Muscat, Sultanate of Oman CONICET, Rivadavia 1917, (1033) Buenos Aires, Argentina

Depto. de Física, Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica, (1429) Buenos Aires, Argentina

Search for more papers by this author

https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218301311040219Cited by:1 (Source: Crossref)

Abstract

We study the deconfinement of hadronic matter into quark matter in a protoneutron star focusing on the effects of the finite size on the formation of just-deconfined color superconducting quark droplets embedded in the hadronic environment. We show that energy-density fluctuations are much more relevant for deconfinement than temperature and neutrino density fluctuations. We calculate the critical size spectrum of energy-density fluctuations that allows deconfinement as well as the nucleation rate of each critical bubble. We find that drops with any radii smaller than 800 fm can be formed at a huge rate when matter achieves the bulk transition limit of 5–6 times the nuclear saturation density.

Keywords:

You currently do not have access to the full text article.
Recommend the journal to your library today!

References

G. Lugones and A. G. Grunfeld, Phys. Rev. D 84, 085003 (2011), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.84.085003. Web of Science, Google Scholar
G. Lugoneset al., Phys. Rev. D 81, 085012 (2010), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.81.085012. Web of Science, Google Scholar
I. Bombaciet al., Phys. Lett. B 680, 448 (2009). Web of Science, ADS, Google Scholar
B. W. Mintzet al., Phys. Rev. D 81, 123012 (2010), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.81.123012. Web of Science, ADS, Google Scholar
M. Hempel, G. Pagliara and J. Schaffner-Bielich, Phys. Rev. D 80, 125014 (2009), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.80.125014. Web of Science, ADS, Google Scholar
J. E. Horvath and G. Lugones, Astronomy and Astrophysics 422, L1 (2004), DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20040180. Web of Science, Google Scholar
G. Lugones and I. Bombaci, Phys. Rev. D 72, 065021 (2005), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.72.065021. Web of Science, Google Scholar
J. Madsen, Phys. Rev. D 50, 3328 (1994), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.50.3328. Web of Science, ADS, Google Scholar
O. Kiriyama and A. Hosaka, Phys. Rev. D 67, 085010 (2003), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.67.085010. Web of Science, Google Scholar
O. Kiriyama, Phys. Rev. D 72, 054009 (2005), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.72.054009. Web of Science, Google Scholar
P. Demorest, Nature 467, 1081 (2010), DOI: 10.1038/nature09466. Web of Science, Google Scholar
J. E. Horvath, O. G. Benvenuto and H. Vucetich, Phys. Rev. D 45, 3865 (1992), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.45.3865. Web of Science, ADS, Google Scholar
G. Lugones and O. G. Benvenuto, Phys. Rev. D 58 (1998), 083001; O. G. Benvenuto and G. Lugones, Mon. Not. R.A.S. 304 (1999), L25 . Google Scholar