Related papers: The Cosmic Quarks
Typical nuclear equations of state and a quark bag model, surprisingly, allow compact stars with alternate layers of neutrons and quarks. One can determine on the basis of the Gibbs free energy which phase, nuclear or quark, is…
The formation rate of quark matter droplets in neutron stars is calculated from a combination of bubble formation rates in cold degenerate and high temperature matter. Nuclear matter calculations of the viscosity and thermal conductivity…
Assuming that cosmic rays entering the Earth's atmosphere contain a small admixture of nuggets of strange quark matter in form of strangelets one can explain a number of apparently "strange" effects observed in different cosmic rays…
Massive neutron stars may harbor deconfined quark matter in their cores. I review some recent work on the microphysics and the phenomenology of compact stars with cores made of quark matter. This includes the equilibrium and stability of…
Quark matter is expected to exist in the interior of compact stellar objects as neutron stars or even the more exotic strange stars, based on the Bodmer-Witten conjecture. Bare strange quark stars and (normal) strange quark-matter stars,…
Although dust is widely found in astrophysics, forming dust is surprisingly difficult. The proper combination of low temperature (<2000 K) and high density is mainly found in the winds of late-type giant and supergiant stars which, as a…
It is shown that a conversion of neurons into strange quark matter in neutron stars is possible by means of a combustion process with a well-defined front. Conditions for the realization of a specific combustion mode, whether deflagration,…
This paper discusses several most intruigung astrophysical implications connected with the possible absolute stability of strange quark matter.This is followed by a discussion of two astrophysical signals that may point at the existence of…
If the dark matter of our galaxy is composed of nuggets of quarks or antiquarks in a colour superconducting phase there will be a small but non-zero flux of these objects through the Earth's atmosphere. A nugget of quark matter will deposit…
Quark matter is believed to exist in the center of neutron stars. A combined model consisting of quark matter and ordinary matter is used to show that the extreme conditions existing in the center could result in a topology change, that is,…
We study the formation and properties of dark neutron stars in a scenario where dark matter is made up of (heavy) dark baryons in a sequestered copy of the MSSM. This scenario naturally explains the coincidence of baryonic and dark matter…
Axion quark nuggets (AQNs) are hypothetical objects with nuclear density that would have formed during the quark-hadron transition and could make up most of the dark matter today. These objects have a mass greater than a few grams and are…
We calculate the present expansion of our Universe endowed with relict colored objects - quarks and gluons - that survived hadronization either as isolated islands of quark-gluon "nuggets", or spread uniformly in the Universe. In the first…
With central densities way above the density of atomic nuclei, neutron stars contain matter in one of the densest forms found in the universe. Depending of the density reached in the cores of neutron stars, they may contain stable phases of…
The nonbaryonic dark matter of the Universe can consist of new stable charged leptons and quarks, if they are hidden in elusive "dark atoms" of composite dark matter. Such possibility can be compatible with the severe constraints on…
Quark matter both in terrestrial experiment and in astrophysics is briefly reviewed. Astrophysical quark matter could appear in the early Universe, in compact stars, and as cosmic rays. Emphasis is put on quark star as the nature of…
We discuss the role of strangeness on the internal constitution and structural properties of neutron stars. In particular, we report on recent calculations of hyperon star properties derived from microscopic equations of state for hyperonic…
Macroscopic nuggets of quark matter were proposed several decades ago as a candidate for dark matter. The formation of these objects in the early universe requires the QCD phase transition to be first order - a requirement that is not…
Matter in its present form was formed when our Universe emerged from the quark-gluon phase (QGP) at about 30mus into its evolution. To explore this early period in the laboratory, we study highly excited matter formed in relativistic heavy…
This paper gives an overview of the properties of all possible equilibrium sequences of compact strange-matter stars with nuclear crusts, which range from strange stars to strange dwarfs. In contrast to their non-strange counterparts,…