Interacting quark matter effects on the structure of compact stars

Abstract

In this work, we study the effects that interacting quark matter has on the stellar structure of strange and charm quark stars. Additionally, their stability against radial pulsations is analyzed using a first-order formalism for adiabatic general relativistic oscillations. Besides, the early stage of stellar evolution of neutron stars after the supernovae explosion, i.e. protoneutron stars, is investigated by considering the possibility of a first-order phase transition to quark matter rich in leptons, where the dynamics of conversion between phases is studied within a thermal nucleation model. For each kind of compact star mentioned we use for the quark phase the equation of state calculated within cold perturbative QCD (pQCD), parametrized only by its renormalization scale. We note that the original pQCD framework is manipulated appropriately to include neutrinos and extended to add heavy quarks to the original system composed only by up, down and strange quark flavors.

Comments: Ph.D. Thesis; 151 pages, 52 figures