High-density Skyrmion matter and Neutron Stars
Abstract
We examine neutron star properties based on a model of dense matter composed of B=1 skyrmions immersed in a mesonic mean field background. The model realizes spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking non-linearly and incorporates scale-breaking of QCD through a dilaton VEV that also affects the mean fields. Quartic self-interactions among the vector mesons are introduced on grounds of naturalness in the corresponding effective field theory. Within a plausible range of the quartic couplings, the model generates neutron star masses and radii that are consistent with a preponderance of observational constraints, including recent ones that point to the existence of relatively massive neutron stars with mass M 1.7 Msun and radius R (12-14) km. If the existence of neutron stars with such dimensions is confirmed, matter at supra-nuclear density is stiffer than extrapolations of most microscopic models suggest.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0708.3436,
title = {High-density Skyrmion matter and Neutron Stars},
author = {Prashanth Jaikumar and Manjari Bagchi and Rachid Ouyed},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0708.3436},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
27 pages, 5 figures, AASTeX style; to be published in The Astrophysical Journal