Speaker
Description
After a short review on the role of excluded volume corrections for the equation of state (EoS) of hadronic matter as probed in heavy-ion collision experiments [1], we present recent applications of excluded volume modifications in the EoS of neutron stars including a Bayesian analysis of mass-radius constraints and hybrid star phenomenology [2] and neutron star cooling [3]. We argue that the repulsive interactions in hadronic matter that arise from the account of excluded volume corrections have their fundamental background in the quark substructure of hadrons that entails a repulsive quark exchange interaction because of the Pauli principle. At the same time this Pauli blocking is to be seen as a precursor effect of the inevitable hadron dissociation (Mott effect) and quark deconfinement at high phase space densities. The excluded volume effect in the neutron star EoS is a necessary condition for obtaining high-mass twin star solutions which, once observed in nature, would provide indirect evidence for the existence of a critical endpoint in the QCD phase diagram [4], the holy grail of third generation heavy-ion collision experiments.
