Stable quark stars beyond neutran stars : can they account for the missing matter ?

Abstract

The structure of a spherically symmetric stable dark 'star' is discussed, at zero temperature, containing 1) a core of quarks in the deconfined phase and antileptons 2) a shell of hadrons in particular $n$, $p$, $\Lambda$ and ${\Sigma }^{-}$ and leptons or antileptons and 3) a shell of hydrogen in the superfluid phase. If the superfluid hydrogen phase goes over into the electromagnetic plasma phase at densities well below one atom / $(10fm{)}^3$, as is usually assumed, the hydrogen shell is insignificant for the mass and the radius of the 'star'. These quantities are then determined approximatively : mass = 1.8 solar masses and radius = 9.2 km. On the contrary if densities of the order of one atom / $(10fm{)}^3$ do form a stable hydrogen superfluid phase, we find a large range of possible masses from 1.8 to 375 solar masses. The radii vary accordingly from 9 to 1200 km.

Comments: 5 pages, 2 figures, contribution to Strange Quark Matter conference, Frankfurt, Germany, Sept. 2001