The expression for the spin susceptibility $chi$ of degenerate quark matter is derived with corrections upto $ {cal O}(g^4ln g^2)$. It is shown that at low density, $chi^{-1}$ changes sign and turns negative indicating a ferromagnetic phase transition. To this order, we also calculate sound velocity $c_1$ and incompressibility $K$ with arbitrary spin polarization. The estimated values of $c_1$ and $K$ show that the equation of state of the polarized matter is stiffer than the unpolarized one. Finally we determine the finite temperature corrections to the exchange energy and derive corresponding results for the spin susceptibility.
We calculate the ground state energy of cold and dense spin polarized quark matter with corrections due to correlation energy $(E_{corr})$. Expressions for $E_{corr}$ both in the non-relativistic and ultra-relativistic regimes have been derived and compared with the exchange and kinetic term present in the perturbation series. It is observed that the inclusion of correlation energy does not rule out the possibility of the ferromagnetic phase transition at low density within the model proposed by Tatsumicite{tatsumi00}. We also derive the spin stiffness constant in the high density limit of such a spin polarized matter.
The phase transition from hadronic to quark matter may take place already during the early post-bounce stage of core collapse supernovae when matter is still hot and lepton rich. If the phase transition is of first order and exhibits a barrier, the formation of the new phase occurs via the nucleation of droplets. We investigate the thermal nucleation of a quark phase in supernova matter and calculate its rate for a wide range of physical parameters. We show that the formation of the first droplet of a quark phase might be very fast and therefore the phase transition to quark matter could play an important role in the mechanism and dynamics of supernova explosions.
Gamma-rays induced by annihilation or decay of dark matter can be its smoking gun signature. In particular, gamma-rays generated by internal bremsstrahlung of Majorana and real scalar dark matter is promising since it can be a leading emission of sharp gamma-rays. However in the case of Majorana dark matter, its cross section for internal bremsstrahlung cannot be large enough to be observed by future gamma-ray experiments if the observed relic density is assumed to be thermally produced. In this paper, we introduce some degenerate particles with Majorana dark matter, and show they lead enhancement of the cross section. As a result, increase of about one order of magnitude for the cross section is possible without conflict with the observed relic density, and it would be tested by the future gamma-ray experiments such as GAMMA-400 and Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). In addition, the constraints of perturbativity, positron observation by the AMS experiment and direct search for dark matter are discussed.
We use a top-down holographic model for strongly interacting quark matter to study the properties of neutron stars. When the corresponding Equation of State (EoS) is matched with state-of-the-art results for dense nuclear matter, we consistently observe a first order phase transition at densities between two and seven times the nuclear saturation density. Solving the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkov equations with the resulting hybrid EoSs, we find maximal stellar masses in the excess of two solar masses, albeit somewhat smaller than those obtained with simple extrapolations of the nuclear matter EoSs. Our calculation predicts that no quark matter exists inside neutron stars.
Heavy-quark effects on the equation of state for cold and dense quark matter are obtained from perturbative QCD, yielding observables parametrized only by the renormalization scale. In particular, we investigate the thermodynamics of charm quark matter under the constraints of $beta$ equilibrium and electric charge neutrality in a region of densities where perturbative QCD is, in principle, much more reliable. Finally, we analyze the stability of charm stars, a possible new branch of ultradense, self-bound compact stars, and find that they are unstable under radial oscillations.