Speaker
Description
Astrophysical observations of massive neutron stars and compact-object mergers increasingly point toward the presence of deconfined quark matter at high densities. In such environments, quarks are expected to form color-superconducting diquark pairs. Their properties are typically modeled within effective theories, where parameter fixing remains challenging due to the absence of diquarks as asymptotic states.
In this work, we employ a functional renormalization group (FRG) framework to self-consistently construct a vacuum low-energy effective description in which scalar diquarks dynamically emerge. Applying the resulting constraints to cold and dense quark matter, we find a sizable diquark gap in the chirally restored phase, along with a speed of sound significantly exceeding the conformal limit. These results suggest that color superconductivity could have observable consequences, provided that quark matter is realized in neutron stars.
| Affiliation | JLU Giessen |
|---|---|
| Career status | Senior |