Speaker
Description
Anisotropic phases are hypothesised to play a role in the small temperature and large chemical potential regime of the QCD phase diagram, making their existence in the core of neutron stars a concrete possibility. I will present the study of such a phase, the chiral density wave (CDW), defined as an anistropic chiral condensate that breaks spatial invariance. Within a mean-field nucleon-meson model, where the nucleonic vacuum fluctuations are taken into account and the parameters of which are fitted using low density properties of nuclear matter, the nuclear CDW is studied. Imposing beta equilibrium and charge neutrality, stable neutron stars are constructed, and the parameter region is studied to check where the CDW is preferred. Even though stars that meet astrophysical constraints do exist for certain parameter choices, a CDW core results in stars that are too light. I will also discuss insight on the CDW from a strongly coupled calculation using the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model within holography.
