2009/10/02 by Nobutoshi Yasutake, Kenta Kiuchi, Kei Kotake
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Condensed matter physics #Equation of state #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Neutron star #Observable #Particle physics #Phase transition #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum chromodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Quark #Quark star #Stars #Strange matter #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.15813.x
17 pages, 10 figures. accepted to MNRAS
arxiv created 2009/10/02 · openalex publication_date 2009/12/01 · arxiv updated 2015/05/14 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate the structures of hybrid stars, which feature a quark core surrounded by a hadronic matter mantle, with super-strong toroidal magnetic fields in full general relativity. Modelling the equation of state (EOS) with a first-order transition by bridging the MIT bag model for the description of quark matter and the nuclear EOS by Shen et al., we numerically construct thousands of equilibrium configurations for studying the effects of phase transition. It is found that the appearance of the quark phase can affect the distributions of the magnetic fields inside the hybrid stars, making the maximum field strength up to about 30 per cent larger than for the normal neutron stars. Using the equilibrium configurations, we explore the possible evolutionary paths to the formation of hybrid stars due to the spin-down of magnetized rotating neutron stars. We find that the energy released by the phase transition to the hybrid stars is quite large (≲1052 erg) even for super-strongly magnetized compact stars. Our results suggest that the strong gravitational-wave emission and the sudden spin-up signature could be observable signals of the quantum chromodynamics phase transition, possibly for a source out to megaparsec distances.