Nucleating quark droplets in the core of magnetars

D. Kroff and E. S. Fraga
Phys. Rev. D 91, 025017 – Published 21 January 2015

Abstract

To assess the possibility of homogeneous nucleation of quark matter in magnetars, we investigate the formation of chirally symmetric droplets in a cold and dense environment in the presence of an external magnetic field. As a framework, we use the one-loop effective potential of the two-flavor quark-meson model. Within the thin-wall approximation, we extract all relevant nucleation parameters and provide an estimate for the typical time scales for the chiral phase conversion in magnetized compact star matter. We show how the critical chemical potential, critical radius, correlation length and surface tension are affected, and how their combination to define the nucleation time seems to allow for nucleation of quark droplets in magnetar matter even for not so small values of the surface tension.

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  • Received 30 September 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.91.025017

© 2015 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

D. Kroff* and E. S. Fraga

  • Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Caixa Postal 68528, 21941-972 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

  • *kroff@if.ufrj.br
  • fraga@if.ufrj.br

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Vol. 91, Iss. 2 — 15 January 2015

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