Abstract
The discovery of nondiffuse sources of gravitational waves through compact-object mergers opens new prospects for the study of physics beyond the Standard Model. In this paper, we study the effects of a new force between quarks, suggested by the gauging of baryon number, on pure neutron matter at supranuclear densities. This leads to a stiffening of the equation of state, allowing neutron stars to be both larger and heavier and possibly accommodating the light progenitor of GW190814 as a neutron star. The role of conventional three-body forces in neutron star structure is still poorly understood, though they can act in a similar way, implying that the mass and radius do not in themselves resolve whether new physics is coming into play. However, a crucial feature of the scenario we propose is that the regions of the new physics parameter space that induce observable changes to neutron star structure are testable at low-energy accelerator facilities. This testability distinguishes our scenario from other classes of new phenomena in dense matter.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 045802 |
| Journal | Physical Review C |
| Volume | 104 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:National Science Foundation Heising-Simons Foundation U.S. Department of Energy
Funding Information:
We thank the Network for Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries (N3AS) for an inspiring environment and support. J.M.B. acknowledges support from National Science Foundation Grant No. PHY-1630782 and Heising-Simons Foundation Grant No. 2017-228, and S.G. acknowledges partial support from U.S. Department of Energy Contract No. DE-FG02-96ER40989.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Published by the American Physical Society
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Nuclear and High Energy Physics