Hybrid stars: how can we identify them ?

24 Mar 2014, 11:40
40m

Speaker

Prof. Mark Alford (Washington University in St. Louis, USA)

Description

At high pressure, nuclear matter will undergo a transition to quark matter, so sufficiently heavy neutron stars may really be ``hybrid stars'' with quark matter cores. We discuss possible signatures of the presence of a quark matter core, such as characteristics of the mass-radius relation, and the allowed range of values of the spin frequency, which is sensitive to quark matter in the core via the r-mode spindown mechanism. We also present a new form of dissipation of r-modes that is expected to occur in hybrid stars: "phase conversion dissipation".

Primary author

Prof. Mark Alford (Washington University in St. Louis, USA)

Presentation materials