Related papers: Dark matter and bubble nucleation in old neutron s…
Under extreme conditions of temperature and/or density, quarks and gluons are expected to undergo a deconfinement phase transition. While this is an ephemeral phenomenon at the ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collider (BNL-RHIC), quark matter…
We investigate a first-order phase transition from hadronic matter to antikaon condensed matter during the cooling stage of protoneutron stars. The phase transition proceeds through the thermal nucleation of antikaon condensed matter. In…
New decay channels for the neutron into dark matter plus other particles have been suggested for explaining a long-standing discrepancy between the neutron lifetime measured from trapped neutrons versus those decaying in flight. Many such…
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…
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…
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…
We study the effects of dark matter on the structural properties of neutron stars. In particular we investigate how the presence of a dark matter component influences the mass-radius relation, the value of the maximum mass of a neutron star…
The potential role of a cosmic vacuum dark component in the properties of neutron stars is investigated. It is assumed that the static, spherically symmetric distribution of matter within neutron stars is supported by two distinct…
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…
In this conference-proceedings contribution, we review recent advances in placing model-independent constraints on the properties of cold and dense QCD matter inside neutron stars. In addition to introducing new bounds for the Equation of…
In this presentation I discuss two aspects of the neutron-matter equation of state. One relates to the symmetry energy of nuclear matter and empirical constraints on its slope parameter at saturation density. The second deals with spatially…
The first stars to form in the Universe may be powered by the annihilation of weakly interacting dark matter particles. These so-called dark stars, if observed, may give us a clue about the nature of dark matter. Here we examine which…
The crust of a neutron star is essentially determined by the low-density region ($\rho<\rho_0\approx0.15-0.16\unit{fm}^{-3}$) of the equation of state. At the bottom of the inner crust, where the density is $\rho\lesssim0.1\rho_0$, the…
We study shear viscosities of different species in hot and neutrino-trapped dense matter relevant to protoneutron stars. It is found that the shear viscosities of neutrons, protons and electrons in neutrino-trapped matter are of the same…
The possibility of formation of a droplet phase (DP) inside a star and its consequences on the structural properties of the star are investigated. For nuclear matter (NM), an equation of state (EOS) based on finite range, momentum and…
Recent experimental observation suggests that neutron decay is always accompanied by emission of electron while in 1% of cases proton is not emitted. We develop a scenario kinematically compatible with experimental observation, where…
We argue that observations of old neutron stars can impose constraints on dark matter candidates even with very small elastic or inelastic cross section, and self-annihilation cross section. We find that old neutron stars close to the…
We discuss the issue on dark matter capture by neutron stars, in particular the process of dark matter thermalization, by which the scattering cross section and the mass of dark matter can be constrained. At first, we evaluate the…
The discrepancies in different measurements of the lifetime of isolated neutrons could be resolved by considering an extra neutron decay channel into dark matter, with a branching ratio of the order of $O(1$\%). Although the decay channel…
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…