Photon emission from dense quark matter

Nov, 2003
19 pages
Published in:
  • Nucl.Phys.A 735 (2004) 543-562
e-Print:
Report number:
  • NORDITA-2003-56-NP

Citations per year

2003200720112015201902468
Abstract:
Thermal emission rates and mean free paths of photons in a color-flavor locked (CFL) phase of quark matter at high densities and moderate temperatures are evaluated. Our calculations are based on a low-energy effective theory for CFL matter describing Goldstone boson excitations and their electromagnetic as well as strong interactions. In-medium coupling strengths of vector mesons are found to be smaller than in vacuum. As a consequence of in-medium modified pion dispersion relations, novel processes such as pi+ pi- -> gamma and gamma -> pi+ pi- become possible. The total photon emissivity is found to be very large, exceeding contributions from thermal e+ e- annihilation above temperatures of about 5 MeV. At the same time, the corresponding mean free paths become very small. Our results imply that the photon flux from the surface of a (hypothetical) CFL star in its early hot stages saturates the black-body limit. Estimates for the early thermal evolution of the star are also presented.
  • quark: matter
  • critical phenomena
  • color flavor locked phase
  • effective Lagrangian: chiral
  • photon: emission
  • photon: absorption
  • electromagnetic interaction
  • strong interaction
  • path length
  • photon: flux
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