No Arabic abstract
Nucleon effective masses are studied in the framework of the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock many-body approach at finite temperature. Self-consistent calculations using the Argonne $V_{18}$ interaction including microscopic three-body forces are reported for varying temperature and proton fraction up to several times the nuclear saturation density. Our calculations are based on the exact treatment of the center-of-mass momentum instead of the average-momentum approximation employed in previous works. We discuss in detail the effects of the temperature together with those of the three-body forces, the density, and the isospin asymmetry. We also provide an analytical fit of the effective mass taking these dependencies into account. The temperature effects on the cooling of neutron stars are briefly discussed based on the results for betastable matter.
We construct a new class of phenomenological equations of state for homogeneous matter for use in simulations of hot and dense matter in local thermodynamic equilibrium. We construct a functional form which respects experimental, observational and theoretical constraints on the nature of matter in various density and temperature regimes. Our equation of state matches (i) the virial coefficients expected from nucleon-nucleon scattering phase shifts, (ii) experimental measurements of nuclear masses and charge radii, (iii) observations of neutron star radii, (iv) theory results on the equation of state of neutron matter near the saturation density, and (v) theory results on the evolution of the EOS at finite temperatures near the saturation density. Our analytical model allows one to compute the variation in the thermodynamic quantities based on the uncertainties in the nature of the nucleon-nucleon interaction. Finally, we perform a correction to ensure the equation of state is causal at all densities, temperatures, and electron fractions.
As the density of matter increases, atomic nuclei disintegrate into nucleons and, eventually, the nucleons themselves disintegrate into quarks. The phase transitions (PTs) between these phases can vary from steep first order to smooth crossovers, depending on certain conditions. First-order PTs with more than one globally conserved charge, so-called non-congruent PTs, have characteristic differences compared to congruent PTs. In this conference proceeding we discuss the non-congruence of the quark deconfinement PT at high densities and/or temperatures relevant for heavy-ion collisions, neutron stars, proto-neutron stars, supernova explosions, and compact-star mergers.
We report a new equation of state (EoS) of cold and hot hyperonic matter constructed in the framework of the quark-meson-coupling (QMC-A) model. The QMC-A EoS yields results compatible with available nuclear physics constraints and astrophysical observations. It covers the range of temperatures from T=0 to 100 MeV, entropies per particle S/A between 0 and 6, lepton fractions from Y$_L$=0.0 to 0.6, and baryon number densities n$_B$=0.05-1.2 fm$^{-3}$. Applications of the QMC-A EoS are made to cold neutron stars (NS) and to hot proto-neutron stars (PNS) in two scenarios, (i) lepton rich matter with trapped neutrinos and (ii) deleptonized chemically equilibrated matter. We find that the QMC-A model predicts hyperons in amounts growing with increasing temperature and density, thus suggesting not only their presence in PNS but also, most likely, in NS merger remnants. The nucleon-hyperon phase transition is studied through the adiabatic index and the speed of sound c$_s$. It is shown that the lowering of (c$_s$/c)$^2$ to and below the conformal limit of 1/3 is a general consequence of instabilities due to any phase transition and is not a unique fingerprint of the hadron-quark matter transition. Rigid rotation of cold and hot stars, their moments of inertia and Kepler frequencies are also explored. The QMC-A model results are compared with two relativistic models, the chiral mean field model (CMF), and the generalized relativistic density functional with hyperons (GRDF-Y). Similarities and differences are discussed.
We present a quantitative analysis of superfluidity and superconductivity in dense matter from observations of isolated neutron stars in the context of the minimal cooling model. Our new approach produces the best fit neutron triplet superfluid critical temperature, the best fit proton singlet superconducting critical temperature, and their associated statistical uncertainties. We find that the neutron triplet critical temperature is likely $2.09^{+4.37}_{-1.41} times 10^{8}$ K and that the proton singlet critical temperature is $7.59^{+2.48}_{-5.81} times 10^{9}$ K. However, we also show that this result only holds if the Vela neutron star is not included in the data set. If Vela is included, the gaps increase significantly to attempt to reproduce Velas lower temperature given its young age. Further including neutron stars believed to have carbon atmospheres increases the neutron critical temperature and decreases the proton critical temperature. Our method demonstrates that continued observations of isolated neutron stars can quantitatively constrain the nature of superfluidity in dense matter.
We calculate the mean free path in a hot and dense nuclear environment for a fermionic dark matter particle candidate in the $sim$GeV mass range interacting with nucleons via scalar and vector effective couplings. We focus on the effects of density and temperature in the nuclear medium in order to evaluate the importance of the final state blocking in the scattering process. We discuss qualitatively possible implications for opacities in stellar nuclear scenarios, where dark matter may be gravitationally accreted.