Equilibrium sequences of non rotating and rapidly rotating crystalline color superconducting hybrid stars

Understand

The three-flavor crystalline color-superconducting (CCS) phase of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is a candidate phase for the ground state of cold matter at moderate densities above the density of the deconfinement phase transition.

• Apart from being a superfluid, the CCS phase has properties of a solid, such as a lattice structure and a shear modulus, and hence the ability to sustain multipolar deformations in gravitational equilibrium.
• We construct equilibrium configurations of hybrid stars composed of nuclear matter at low, and CCS quark matter at high, densities.
• Phase equilibrium between these phases is possible only for rather stiff equations of state of nuclear matter and large couplings in the effective Nambu--Jona-Lasinio Lagrangian describing the CCS state.