Speaker
Description
Deconfined quark matter at asymptotically high densities is weakly coupled, due to the asymptotic freedom of QCD. In this weak-coupling regime, bulk thermodynamic properties of quark matter, assuming a trivial ground state, are currently known to partial next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order. However, the ground state at high densities is expected to be a color superconductor, in which the excitation spectrum of (at least some) quarks exhibit a gap with a non-perturbative dependence on the strong coupling.
In this talk, I present results for the thermodynamic properties of two-flavor color-superconducting quark matter at high densities and zero temperature at next-to-leading order in the coupling in the presence of a finite gap. I will discuss findings of our work as well as comment on whether they should be expected to extend to the case of three-flavor quark matter of relevance to neutron stars.
