2012/09/17 by Y. J. Guo, X. Y. Lai, Xiaoyu Lai +5 · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Geological and Geophysical Studies #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) #astro-ph.SR #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1209.3688
10 pages, 8 figures, 1 table
openalex publication_date 2012/09/17 · arxiv created 2013/08/19 · arxiv updated 2013/08/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The state of super-dense matter is essential for us to understand the nature of pulsars, but the non- perturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD) makes it very difficult for direct calculations of the state of cold matter at realistic baryon number densities inside compact stars. Nevertheless, from an observational point of view, it is conjectured that pulsars could be made up of quark clusters since the strong coupling between quarks might render quarks grouped in clusters. We are trying an effort to find an equation of state of condensed quark-cluster matter in a phenomenological way. Supposing that the quark-clusters could be analogized to inert gases, we apply here the corresponding-state approach to derive the equation of state of quark-cluster matter, as was similarly demonstrated for nuclear and neutron-star matter in 1970s. According to the calculations presented, the quark-cluster stars, which are composed of quark-cluster matter, could then have high maximum mass that is consistent with observations and, in turn, further observations of pulsar mass would also put constraints to the properties of quark-cluster matter. Moreover, the melting heat during solid-liquid phase conversion and the related astrophysical consequences are also briefly discussed.