dr Thomas Klähn

Quarks in Compact Stars - Truth or Fiction?

The equation of state (EoS) is one of the keys to understand observational data from supernovae and compact stars. The intrinsic connection between the macroscopic structure and evolution of these objects and the underlying fundamental interactions between the constituent particles on the microscopic level challenges our understanding of nature on both scales. During the presentation a brief overview of constraints on the EoS from terrestrial experiments, astrophysical observations, and theoretical considerations is given. The extreme densities that can be reached in the core of compact stars give reason to the assumption that in this domain hadrons might dissolve and a deconfined quark gluon plasma forms. The second part of the presentation discusses resulting questions: How do we describe deconfined quarks and deconfinement? Do our quark matter models agree with observational data? Can we decide whether quark matter in compact stars is a reality?