QUARK MATTER IN COMPACT STARS: ASTROPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS AND POSSIBLE SIGNATURES

After a brief non technical introduction of the basic properties of strange quark matter (SQM) in compact stars, we consider some of the late important advances in the field, and discuss some recent astrophysical observational data that could shed new light on the possible presence of SQM in compact stars. We show that above a threshold value of the gravitational mass a neutron star (pure hadronic star) is metastable to the decay (conversion) to an hybrid neutron star or to a strange star. We explore the consequences of the metastability of “massive ” neutron stars and of the existence of stable compact “quark ” stars (hybrid neutron stars or strange stars) on the concept of limiting mass of compact stars, and we give an extension of this concept with respect to the classical one given in 1939 by Oppenheimer and Volkoff. 1. A brief history of quark matter in compact stars In 1964 Murray Gell-Mann 1 and George Zweig 2 proposed that the proton, the neutron, and all the other hadrons (i.e. particles which feel the strong interaction) are not elementary, but are composed of smaller (point-like) constituents which were called quarks. a In the original model there are three fundamental quarks nicknamed