Related papers: The Cosmic Quarks
The assumption underlying the existence of quark stars is based on the Bodmer-Witten conjecture. These authors have claimed that it is possible that the interior of a neutron-like star does not consist primarily of hadrons, but rather of…
Strong nuggets with a baryon number of $A\sim 10^{10-30}$ could be able to survive from the cosmic separation of the QCD phases, provided the transition from strange quark matter to strangeon matter is accounted for, thereby evading…
It is generally agreed on that the tremendous densities reached in the centers of neutron stars provide a high-pressure environment in which numerous novel particles processes are likely to compete with each other. These processes range…
The thermal nucleation of quark matter bubbles inside neutron stars is examined for various temperatures which the star may realistically encounter during its lifetime. It is found that for a bag constant less than a critical value, a very…
The presence of quark matter in neutron star interiors may have distinctive signatures in basic observables such as (i) masses and radii [1], (ii) surface temperatures versus age [2], (iii) spin-down rates of milli-second pulsars [3], and…
For physically reasonable bulk and surface properties, quark matter has recently been found to coexist with nuclear matter inside neutron stars in a uniform background of electrons. The microstructure of this mixed phase starts out with a…
The interiors of neutron stars enjoy ideal conditions for the conversion of hadrons to a strange quark phase, theorized to be the stablest form of matter. Though numerous astrophysical means to prompt such a deconfinement phase transition…
This short review aims at giving a brief overview of the various states of matter that have been suggested to exist in the ultra-dense centers of neutron stars. Particular emphasis is put on the role of quark deconfinement in neutron stars…
We present a new scenario for the development of the Universe after the Big Bang, built on the conjecture that a vast majority of the primordial quark matter did not undergo a phase transition to normal nuclear matter, but rather split up…
It is entirely plausible that during the primordial quark-hadron transition, microseconds after the Big Bang, the universe may experience supercooling accompanied by mini inflation leading to a first-order phase transition from quarks to…
Forty years ago Witten suggested that dark matter could be composed of macroscopic clusters of strange quark matter. This idea was very popular for several years, but it dropped out of fashion once lattice QCD calculations indicated that…
The possibility that the relics of quark hadron phase transition in the microsecond old universe, the quark nuggets, may well be reasonable candidates for cold dark matter is critically examined.
Recent observations of neutron star masses close to the maximum predicted by nucleonic equations of state begin to challenge our understanding of dense matter in neutron stars, and constrain the possible presence of quark matter in their…
Strange stars ought to exist in the universe according to the strange quark matter hypothesis, which states that matter made of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks could be the true ground state of baryonic matter rather…
Stable neutrino and U quark of 4th generation are excluded neither by experimental data, nor by astrophysical constraints. Moreover, excess of stable $\bar U$ quarks in the Universe can lead to an exciting composite nuclear-interacting form…
The state of cold bulk matter at around nuclear density depends on the fundamental strong interaction between quarks at low-energy scale, so-called non-perturbative quantum chromo-dynamics. Such kind of matter is conjectured to be condensed…
Some recent developments concerning the role of strange quark matter for astrophysical systems and the QCD phase transition in the early universe are addressed. Causality constraints of the soft nuclear equation of state as extracted from…
Gravity compresses the matter in the cores of neutron stars to densities which are significantly higher than the density of ordinary atomic nuclei, thus providing a high-pressure environment in which numerous particle processes - from the…
A false vacuum could be a profound ingredient of fundamental physics, yet its direct detection in laboratories is hindered when the lifetime is exponentially long. Conventional static phase diagrams often discard metastable false vacuum, we…
Does deconfined cold quark matter occur in nature? This is currently one of the fundamental open questions in nuclear astrophysics. In these proceedings, I review the current state-of-the-art techniques to address this question in a…