2002/12/31 by Kirk B. W. Buckley, Max A. Metlitski, Ariel Zhitnitsky +1
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Drum #Engineering #Environmental science #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Mechanical engineering #Particle physics #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum chromodynamics #astro-ph #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.68.105006
published as Phys.Rev. D68 (2003) 105006 · 11 pages, accepted for publication in Physical Review D
arxiv created 2003/10/15 · openalex publication_date 2003/11/17 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Recently it was shown that high density QCD supports of number of topological defects. In particular, there are U(1)Y strings that arise due to K0 condensation that occurs when the strange quark mass is relatively large. The unique feature of these strings is that they possess a nonzero K+ condensate that is trapped on the core. In the following we will show that these strings (with nontrivial core structure) can form closed loops with conserved charge and currents trapped on the string world sheet. The presence of conserved charges allows these topological defects, called vortons, to carry angular momentum, which makes them classically stable objects. We also give arguments demonstrating that vortons carry angular momentum very efficiently (in terms of energy per unit angular momentum) such that they might be the important degrees of freedom in the cores of neutron stars.