Neutron Stars and Massive Quark Matter

Abstract

Using the Color-Dielectric model to describe quark confinement, including strange quarks and accounting for beta--equilibrium, we get masses for a static neutron star in the range $1.3\le M/M_{\odot }\le 1.54$ for a radius $R\approx 9$ km. Rapid cooling through the direct URCA mechanism is obtained. The implications for the composition of neutron stars is discussed.

Comments: 8 pages, Revtex style, 4 uuencoded figures appended