Speaker
Description
The study of neutron stars establishes a direct connection between astronomy and nuclear and particle physics, allowing a better understanding of the behavior of matter under conditions that are difficult to reach in the laboratory. Massive neutron stars provide very important constraints on high-density nuclear matter and its associated Equation of State (EoS), which is still essentially unknown. Depending on neutron star mass and rotational frequency, gravity may compress the matter in the core regions of such objects up to more than ten times the density of ordinary atomic nuclei, thus providing a high-pressure environment in which numerous subatomic particle processes are likely expected to compete with each other and phase transitions to new states of matter, foremost quark matter, may occur. In this talk, I will provide a general discussion of the properties of quark matter and explore its role for the core composition of neutron stars. Different lines of research carried out by the Astrophysics group at the FCAG will be introduced.
