2009/09/30 by Matt Braby, Jingyi Chao, Thomas Schäfer +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevc.81.045205
published as Phys.Rev.C81:045205,2010 · 20 pages, 4 figures - Changed small numerical error and added some comments based on discussions; conclusions unchanged
arxiv created 2009/12/04 · openalex publication_date 2010/04/22 · arxiv updated 2010/04/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We compute the thermal conductivity of color-flavor-locked (CFL) quark matter. At temperatures below the scale set by the gap in the quark spectrum, transport properties are determined by collective modes. In this work we focus on the contribution from the lightest modes, the superfluid phonon and the massive neutral kaon. The calculation is done in the framework of kinetic theory, using variational solutions of the linearized Boltzmann equation. We find that the thermal conductivity owing to phonons is \ensuremathκ(P)~1.04\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi1026 \ensuremathμ5008\ensuremathΔ50^\ensuremath-6 erg cm^\ensuremath-1 s^\ensuremath-1 K^\ensuremath-1 and the contribution of kaons is \ensuremathκ(K)~2.81\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi1021 f_\ensuremathπ,1004TMeV1/2m10^\ensuremath-5/2 erg cm^\ensuremath-1 s^\ensuremath-1 K^\ensuremath-1. These values are smaller than previous estimates but still much larger than (in the case of phonons) or similar to (for kaons) the corresponding values in nuclear matter. From the phonon thermal conductivity we estimate that a CFL quark matter core of a compact star becomes isothermal on a time scale of a few seconds.