Cavitation from bulk viscosity in neutron stars and quark stars

Jes Madsen

Published 2009-09-21, updated 2009-09-30Version 2

The bulk viscosity in quark matter is sufficiently high to reduce the effective pressure below the corresponding vapor pressure during density perturbations in neutron stars and strange stars. This leads to mechanical instability where the quark matter breaks apart into fragments comparable to cavitation scenarios discussed for ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Similar phenomena may take place in kaon-condensed stellar cores. Possible applications to compact star phenomenology include a new mechanism for damping oscillations and instabilities, triggering of phase transitions, changes in gravitational wave signatures of binary star inspiral, and astrophysical formation of strangelets. At a more fundamental level it points to the possible inadequacy of a hydrodynamical treatment of these processes in compact stars.