English

Chiral symmetry restoration and hyperon suppression in neutron stars

Nuclear Theory 2026-02-16 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

The ``hyperon puzzle'' remains a fundamental challenge in nuclear astrophysics. We investigate hyperon emergence in neutron star matter using the SU(3)SU(3) parity doublet model with chiral representation (3,3ˉ)+(3ˉ,3)(3,\bar{3}) + (\bar{3},3). This framework naturally incorporates chiral symmetry restoration and provides a systematic description of baryon masses in dense matter through the interplay between the chiral condensate and the chiral invariant mass m0m_0. We find that the hyperon onset density exhibits strong sensitivity to m0m_0: for m0=500m_0 = 500 MeV, hyperons first appear at 1.9n01.9n_0 while for m0750m_0 \gtrsim 750 MeV, hyperons emerge only above 5n05n_0. This delayed onset arises from the weakened density dependence of baryon masses at larger m0m_0 values. When the hyperon onset density exceeds the expected quark-hadron transition range (22--5n05n_0), matter undergoes deconfinement before hyperons populate, avoiding the EoS softening while maintaining consistency with massive neutron star observations. Our results demonstrate that chiral dynamics provides a natural resolution to the hyperon puzzle without requiring ad hoc repulsive hyperon interactions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.12503,
  title  = {Chiral symmetry restoration and hyperon suppression in neutron stars},
  author = {Bikai Gao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.12503},
  year   = {2026}
}