Stability of strange star crusts and strangelets
Abstract
We construct strangelets, taking into account electrostatic effects, including Debye screening, and arbitrary surface tension σ of the interface between vacuum and quark matter. We find that there is a critical surface tension σcrit below which large strangelets are unstable to fragmentation and below which quark star surfaces will fragment into a crystalline crust made of charged strangelets immersed in an electron gas. We derive a model-independent relationship between σcrit and two parameters that characterize any quark matter equation of state. For reasonable model equations of state, we find σcrit typically of order a few MeV/fm2. If σ⩽σcrit, the size-distribution of strangelets in cosmic rays could feature a peak corresponding to the stable strangelets that we construct.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review D
- Pub Date:
- June 2006
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevD.73.114016
- arXiv:
- arXiv:hep-ph/0604134
- Bibcode:
- 2006PhRvD..73k4016A
- Keywords:
-
- 25.75.Nq;
- 26.60.+c;
- 97.60.Jd;
- Quark deconfinement quark-gluon plasma production and phase transitions;
- Nuclear matter aspects of neutron stars;
- Neutron stars;
- High Energy Physics - Phenomenology;
- Astrophysics;
- Nuclear Theory
- E-Print:
- 11 pages, LaTeX