skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Metastability of hadronic compact stars

Journal Article · · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4]
  1. Dipartimento di Fisica 'Enrico Fermi', Universita di Pisa, and INFN, Sezione di Pisa, Largo Bruno Pontecorvo 3, I-56127 Pisa (Italy)
  2. Indian Association for the Cultivation of Sciences, Jadavpur, Kolkata-700 032 (India)
  3. Centro de Fisica Teorica, Department of Physics, University of Coimbra, 3004-516 Coimbra (Portugal)
  4. Departament d'Estructura i Constituents de la Materia. Universitat de Barcelona, Avda. Diagonal 647, E-08028 Barcelona (Spain)

Pure hadronic compact stars, above a threshold value of their gravitational mass (central pressure), are metastable to the conversion to quark stars (hybrid or strange stars). In this paper, we present a systematic study of the metastability of pure hadronic compact stars using different relativistic models for the equation of state. In particular, we compare results for the quark-meson coupling model with those for the Glendenning-Moszkowski parametrization of the nonlinear Walecka model. For the quark-meson coupling model, we find large values (M{sub cr}=1.6-1.9M{sub {center_dot}}) for the critical mass of the hadronic star sequence and we find that the formation of a quark star is only possible with a soft quark matter equation of state. For the Glendenning-Moszkowski parametrization of the nonlinear Walecka model, we explore the effect of different hyperon couplings on the critical mass and on the stellar conversion energy. We find that increasing the value of the hyperon coupling constants shifts the bulk transition point for quark deconfinement to higher densities, increases the stellar metastability threshold mass and the value of the critical mass, and thus makes the formation of quark stars less likely. For the largest values of the hyperon couplings we find a critical mass which may be as high as 1.9-2.1M{sub {center_dot}}. These stellar configurations, which contain a large central hyperon fraction (f{sub Y,cr}{approx}30%), would be able to describe highly massive compact stars, such as the one associated with the millisecond pulsar PSR B1516+02B with a mass M=1.94{sub -0.19}{sup +0.17}M{sub {center_dot}}.

OSTI ID:
21249989
Journal Information:
Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 77, Issue 8; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.77.083002; (c) 2008 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0556-2821
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Neutron star properties in density-dependent relativistic Hartree-Fock theory
Journal Article · Mon Dec 15 00:00:00 EST 2008 · Physical Review. C, Nuclear Physics · OSTI ID:21249989

Nonrotating and rotating neutron stars in the extended field theoretical model
Journal Article · Mon Oct 15 00:00:00 EDT 2007 · Physical Review. C, Nuclear Physics · OSTI ID:21249989

{gamma}-ray bursts and the QCD phase diagram
Journal Article · Wed Feb 15 00:00:00 EST 2006 · Physical Review. C, Nuclear Physics · OSTI ID:21249989