A Pedagogical Discussion of Quarkyonic Matter and Its Implication for Neutron Stars

Abstract

This paper is a brief pedagogical review of the ideas that motivate the concept of Quarkyonic Matter. If N_c is the number of quark colors, baryonic matter at very high density and low temperature remains confining to density scales of the order of N$3/2\atop{c}$ Λ$3\atop{QCD}$ that is parametrically larger than that of the QCD scale Λ$3\atop{QCD}$. This implies that a description of nuclear matter will involve both quark and confined degrees of freedom. I argue that the equation of state of Quarkyonic Matter should be very hard, and the sound velocity should rise very rapidly from its small value at nuclear matter densities to a value of the order of 1 at a few times nuclear matter density.

Topics & Concepts