Strongly coupled quark matter in neutron stars and their mergers
Abstract
The discovery of the strongly-coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) in high-energy heavy-ion collisions has revealed remarkable properties of matter at high temperature, with transport coefficients close to conjectured bounds from quantum field theory at strong coupling. The high sQGP collision rates imply very large energy uncertainties and the melting of quasiparticle structures. Deploying quantum many-body theory based on the self-consistent T-matrix approach for the sQGP at high temperature, we investigate its manifestation at high baryon density and low temperature, as present in neutron stars and their mergers. We constrain the chemical-potential dependence of the quark interaction kernel using first-principles information from Quantum Chromodynamics on baryon-number susceptibilities. Very large collisional widths persist at large density and are found to relegate superconducting phases to rather small temperatures. Instead, a strongly coupled diquark liquid prevails in the thermodynamics under the conditions relevant to neutron-star mergers. At lower densities, the diquarks take over from the single-quark contributions, suggesting a pathway toward hadronization. Our results are consistent with observational constraints on the equation of state of neutron stars, corroborating the presence of strongly coupled quark matter in the interior of these objects.
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BibTeX
@misc{maslov2026strongly,
title = {{Strongly coupled quark matter in neutron stars and their mergers}},
author = {Konstantin Maslov and Ralf Rapp and Joaquin Grefa and Veronica Dexheimer and Claudia Ratti},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.28879},
eprint = {2608.28879},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28879},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Strongly coupled quark matter in neutron stars and their mergers
AU - Konstantin Maslov
AU - Ralf Rapp
AU - Joaquin Grefa
AU - Veronica Dexheimer
AU - Claudia Ratti
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.28879
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28879
AB - The discovery of the strongly-coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) in high-energy heavy-ion collisions has revealed remarkable properties of matter at high temperature, with transport coefficients close to conjectured bounds from quantum field theory at strong coupling. The high sQGP collision rates imply very large energy uncertainties and the melting of quasiparticle structures. Deploying quantum many-body theory based on the self-consistent T-matrix approach for the sQGP at high temperature, we investigate its manifestation at high baryon density and low temperature, as present in neutron stars and their mergers. We constrain the chemical-potential dependence of the quark interaction kernel using first-principles information from Quantum Chromodynamics on baryon-number susceptibilities. Very large collisional widths persist at large density and are found to relegate superconducting phases to rather small temperatures. Instead, a strongly coupled diquark liquid prevails in the thermodynamics under the conditions relevant to neutron-star mergers. At lower densities, the diquarks take over from the single-quark contributions, suggesting a pathway toward hadronization. Our results are consistent with observational constraints on the equation of state of neutron stars, corroborating the presence of strongly coupled quark matter in the interior of these objects.
ER -