Speaker
Description
The phase transition from hadronic to quark matter may take place
already during the early post-bounce stage of core collapse supernovae and in
neutron star mergers. If the phase transition is of first order, the formation of
the quark matter phase occurs via the nucleation of droplets. The timescales
relevant for the phase conversion dynamics, as well as the possibility of
mixed phases, are very sensitive to the value of the surface tension in this
dense environment. We discuss the computation of the surface tension from
the initial purely chiral models to a nucleon-meson model that describes
nuclear matter in the low-density sector, with fully broken chiral symmetry,
and the approximately chirally restored phase at high density within a unified
effective potential. Finally, we incorporate parity doubling, which allows for
stable static configurations of stars with a metastable matter core, enabling
stars with masses higher than the expected minimum mass of a neutron star
formed via core collapse supernova and around the value of the less massive
observed neutron star which makes metastability related phenomena
particularly relevant. In all cases, we find values of the surface tension that
favor the nucleation of quark matter.
