Speaker
Description
Following the idea that a light, compact sexaquark state with quark content (uuddss) might
might be a candidate for baryonic dark matter that has gone unnoticed by experiments so far
because its decay channels are practically closed [1], we investigate its possible role in the
physics of compact stars. We find that the stringent constraints on the equation of state
from mass and radius measurements of the high mass pulsar PSR J0740+6620 and bounds
on the compactness from the tidal deformability measurement for the binary neutron star
merger GW170817 cannot be accommodated simultaneously when the sexaquark would
survive under the conditions of high densities in neutron star interiors.
As a solution to this dilemma, we present the dissociation of the sexaquark by a deconfinement
transition to color superconducting quark matter, fulfilling all present constraints from
multi-messenger astronomy.
The sexaquark mass parameter favored by the present analysis has recently been used
to predict within a thermal statistical model the yield of sexaquarks produced in heavy-ion
collisions at LHC [2].
[1] G. Farrar, 6-quark Dark Matter, arXiv:1711.10971 [hep-ph]
[2] D. Blaschke et al., Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 36 (2021) 2141005; arXiv:2111.03770 [hep-ph]
This work is supported by NCN under grant number 2019/33/B/ST9/03059.
