New class of compact stars: Pion stars

Abstract

We investigate the viability of a new type of compact star whose main constituent is a Bose-Einstein condensate of charged pions. Several different setups are considered, where a gas of charged leptons and neutrinos is also present. The pionic equation of state is obtained from lattice QCD simulations in the presence of an isospin chemical potential, and requires no modeling of the nuclear force. The gravitationally bound configurations of these systems are found by solving the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkov equations. We discuss weak decays within the pion condensed phase and elaborate on the generation mechanism of such objects.

Comments: 8 pages, 5 figures. v2 includes discussion of weak processes in the condensed phase and effects of neutrinos. v3 fixed typos, minor changes, matches journal version