Holographic cold dense matter constrained by neutron stars
Lin Zhang, Mei Huang
Abstract
The equation of state (EOS) for cold dense matter inside neutron stars is investigated by using holographic QCD models that consist of the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton system and the improved Karch-Katz-Son-Stephanov action for the flavor part. This method of describing holographic nuclear matter in the $\mathrm{Einstein}\text{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{Maxwell}\text{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{dilaton}+\mathrm{Karch}\text{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{Katz}\text{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{Son}\text{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{Stephanov}$ framework is different from that by using the Dirac-Born-Infeld action and the Chern-Simons terms. Combining with the Hebeler-Lattimer-Pethick-Schwenk intermediate EOS, the hybrid EOS inside the neutron stars is constructed. The obtained hybrid EOS is located in the range that is defined by the low-density chiral effective theory, the high-density perturbative QCD, and the polytropic interpolations between them, and is constrained by the astrophysical observations. The square of the sound velocity reaches a maximum value larger than 0.8 in the region of 2--5 times the saturation baryon number density and approaches the conformal limit at the high baryon density range. The mass-radius relation and the tidal deformability of the neutron stars are in agreement with astrophysical measurements. The possible maximum mass for the neutron star is about $2.5\text{ }\text{ }{M}_{\ensuremath{\bigodot}}$ and the radius is about 12 km then. It is noticed that the holographic quark matter branch in the mass-radius relation is always unstable and the holographic nuclear matter can produce a stable branch. These results indicate that even in the core of the NS, the matter is still in the confinement phase and the quark matter is not favored.