Strangeon and Strangeon Star

Understand

The nature of pulsar-like compact stars is essentially a central question of the fundamental strong interaction (explained in quantum chromo-dynamics) at low energy scale, the solution of which still remains a challenge though tremendous efforts have been tried.

• This kind of compact objects could actually be strange quark stars if strange quark matter in bulk may constitute the true ground state of the strong-interaction matter rather than Fe^56 (the so-called Witten's conjecture).
• From astrophysical points of view, however, it is proposed that strange cluster matter could be absolutely stable and thus those compact stars could be strange cluster stars in fact.
• This proposal could be regarded as a general Witten's conjecture: strange matter in bulk could be absolutely stable, in which quarks are either free (for strange quark matter) or localized (for strange cluster matter).