Multiple configurations of neutron stars containing quark matter *

Abstract

Abstract The main purpose of this study is to interpret the possibilities of hybrid star configurations under different phase transition paths and provide a general description of the conditions and features of the different configurations. We assume that there are two possible phase transition paths, i.e., from a nuclear phase to a 2flavor(2f)/3flavor(3f) quark phase directly, or first from a nuclear phase to a 2f quark phase, and then from that phase to a 3f quark phase sequentially. In addition, we consider Maxwell and Gibbs constructions based on the assumption of a first-order transition, which yields multiple configurations of hybrid stars: N-2f, N-3f, and N-2f-3f for a Maxwell construction, and N-2fmix-2f, N-3fmix-3f, N-2f3fmix, and N-2fmix-3f for a Gibbs construction. From the radii analysis of different hybrid star configurations with the same mass of , the appearance of the quark matter (from nuclear to 2f or 3f quark matter) causes a radius difference of 0.5km~2km and provides the possibility of detection by NICER in the future. However, the sequential transition from 2f to 3f quark matter is difficult to detect because the transition does not lead to too high of a change in radius (far smaller than ). The dependence solely on the measurements of the stellar radii to probe the equation of state of dense matter in neutron stars causes difficulties. Multi-messenger observations can help us to infer the interior of a neutron star in the future.