2003/11/30 by C. Vogt, Carsten Vogt, Ralf Rapp +3
Physics and Astronomy · #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #astro-ph #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2004.02.014
published as Nucl.Phys. A735 (2004) 543-562 · 20 pages latex, 5 figures; v2: Figs.1 + 2 corrected, references added, minor revisions in text, conclusions unchanged, to appear in Nucl. Phys. A
openalex publication_date 2004/03/06 · arxiv created 2004/03/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Thermal emission rates and mean free paths of photons in a color-flavor locked (CFL) phase of quark matter at high densities and moderate temperatures are evaluated. Our calculations are based on a low-energy effective theory for CFL matter describing Goldstone boson excitations and their electromagnetic as well as strong interactions. In-medium coupling strengths of vector mesons are found to be smaller than in vacuum. As a consequence of in-medium modified pion dispersion relations, novel processes such as pi+ pi- -> gamma and gamma -> pi+ pi- become possible. The total photon emissivity is found to be very large, exceeding contributions from thermal e+ e- annihilation above temperatures of about 5 MeV. At the same time, the corresponding mean free paths become very small. Our results imply that the photon flux from the surface of a (hypothetical) CFL star in its early hot stages saturates the black-body limit. Estimates for the early thermal evolution of the star are also presented.