Surface effects in color superconducting strange-quark matter

Abstract

Surface effects in strange-quark matter play an important role for certain observables which have been proposed in order to identify strange stars, and color superconductivity can strongly modify these effects. We study the surface of color superconducting strange-quark matter by solving the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov equations for finite systems (“strangelets”) within the MIT bag model, supplemented with a pairing interaction. Because of the bag-model boundary condition, the strange-quark density is suppressed at the surface. This leads to a positive surface charge, concentrated in a layer of ∼1 fm below the surface, even in the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase. However, since in the CFL phase all quarks are paired, this positive charge is compensated by a negative charge, which turns out to be situated in a layer of a few tens of fm below the surface, and the total charge of CFL strangelets is zero. We also study the surface and curvature contributions to the total energy. Because of the strong pairing, the energy as a function of the mass number is very well reproduced by a liquid-drop type formula with curvature term.

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