Department of Physics
Research, teaching and outreach in Physics at UW–Madison

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NPAC (Nuclear/Particle/Astro/Cosmo) Forum
Quark Matter in Neutron Stars
Date: Thursday, April 16th
Time: 4:00 pm
Place: 4274 Chamberlin
Speaker: Mark Alford, Washington University
Abstract: Quark matter at high density and low temperature is expected to be a color superconductor, which is a degenerate Fermi gas of quarks with a condensate of Cooper pairs near the Fermi surface. At the highest densities, where the QCD coupling is weak, rigorous calculations are possible, and the ground state is a particularly symmetric state, the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase. At lower densities the CFL phase suffers from flavor-symmetry-breaking stresses, so alternative phases,
some of which break translation and/or rotation invariance, may be favored. I will review the state of our understanding of these phenomena, and discuss the effort to develop signatures of the presence of color superconducting quark matter in neutron stars.
Host: Michael J. Ramsey-Musolf
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