Related papers: A corresponding-state approach to quark-cluster ma…
Two kinds of difficulties have challenged the physics community for many years: (1) knowing nature's building blocks (particle physics) and (2) understanding interacting many-body systems (many-body physics). Both of them exist in the…
It is still a matter of debate to understand the equation of state of cold supra-nuclear matter in compact stars because of unknown on-perturbative strong interaction between quarks. Nevertheless, it is speculated from an astrophysical view…
The nature of pulsar-like compact stars is still in controversy although the first pulsar was found more than 40 years ago. Generally speaking, conventional neutron stars and non-mainstream quark stars are two types of models to describe…
Quark clustering could occur in cold quark matter because of the strong coupling between quarks at realistic baryon densities of compact stars. Although one may still not be able to calculate this conjectured matter from first principles,…
It depends on the state of matter at supra-nuclear density to model pulsar's structure, which is unfortunately not certain due to the difficulties in physics. In cold quark matter at realistic baryon densities of compact stars (with an…
A quark-cluster state, rather than the color-super-conductivity state, may appear in matter with low-temperature but high density, since the phase transition of chiral symmetry broken and that of color-confinement could not occur…
The study of dense matter at ultra-high density has a very long history, which is meaningful for us to understand not only cosmic events in extreme circumstances but also fundamental laws of physics. It is well known that the state of cold…
It is a pity that the real state of matter in pulsar-like stars is still not determined confidently because of the uncertainty about cold matter at supranuclear density, even 40 years after the discovery of pulsar. Nuclear matter (related…
The matter inside pulsar-like compact stars could be in a quark-cluster phase since in cold dense matter at a few nuclear densities (2 to 10 times), quarks could be coupled still very strongly and condensate in position space to form quark…
It is conventionally thought that the state equation of dense matter softens and thus cannot result in high maximum mass if pulsars are quark stars, and that a recently discovered $2M_\odot$ pulsar (PSR J1614-2230) may make quark stars to…
According to the hypothesis that strange quark matter may be the true ground state of matter at extremely high densities, strange quark stars should be stable and could exist in the Universe. It is possible that pulsars may actually be…
Lattice QCD studies of the thermodynamics of the hot quark-gluon plasma (QGP) demonstrate the importance of accounting for the interactions of quarks and gluons, if one wants to investigate the phase structure of strongly interacting…
We perform an O(alpha_s^2) perturbative calculation of the equation of state of cold but dense QCD matter with two massless and one massive quark flavor, finding that perturbation theory converges reasonably well for quark chemical…
A pulsar-like compact star is the rump left behind after a supernova where normal baryonic matter is intensely compressed by gravity, but the real state of such compressed baryonic matter is still not well understood because of the…
The properties of dense QCD matter are delineated through the construction of equations of state which should be consistent with QCD calculations in the low and high density limits, nuclear laboratory experiments, and the neutron star…
The state of cold quark matter really challenges both astrophysicists and particle physicists, even many-body physicists. It is conventionally suggested that BCS-like color superconductivity occurs in cold quark matter; however, other…
Pulsar-like objects are extremely compact, with an average density that exceeds nuclear saturation density, where the fundamental strong interaction plays an essential role, particularly in the low-energy regime. The internal structures and…
The effect of the QCD phase transition is studied for the mass-radius relation of compact stars and for hot and dense matter at a given proton fraction used as input in core-collapse supernova simulations. The phase transitions to the 2SC…
The recent measurement of a $1.97\pm 0.04$ solar-mass pulsar places a stringent lower bound on the maximum mass of compact stars and therefore challenges the existence of any agents that soften the equation of state of ultra-dense matter.…
Motivated by the need for a solid state strange quark matter to better explain some observational phenomena, we discussed possibility of color singlet cluster formation in cold strange quark matter by a rough calculation following the…