Exotic star

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_star

An exotic star is a hypothetical compact star composed of exotic matter (something not made of electrons, protons, neutrons, or muons), and balanced against gravitational collapse by degeneracy pressure or other quantum properties.

Types of exotic stars include

• quark stars (composed of quarks)
• strange stars (composed of strange quark matter, a condensate of up, down, and strange quarks)
• § Preon stars (speculative material composed of preons, which are hypothetical particles and "building blocks" of quarks and leptons, should quarks be decomposable into component sub-particles).

Of the various types of exotic star proposed, the most well evidenced and understood is the quark star, although its existence is not confirmed.

Quark stars and strange stars

Main articles: Quark star and Strange star

A quark star is a hypothesized object that results from the decomposition of neutrons into their constituent up and down quarks under gravitational pressure. It is expected to be smaller and denser than a neutron star, and may survive in this new state indefinitely, if no extra mass is added. Effectively, it is a single, very large hadron. Quark stars that contain strange matter are called strange stars.

Based on observations released by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory on 10 April 2002, two objects, named RX J1856.5−3754 and 3C 58, were suggested as quark star candidates. The former appeared to be much smaller and the latter much colder than expected for a neutron star, suggesting that they were composed of material denser than neutronium. However, these observations were met with skepticism by researchers who said the results were not conclusive. After further analysis, RX J1856.5−3754 was excluded from the list of quark star candidates.

Electroweak stars

An electroweak star is a hypothetical type of exotic star in which the gravitational collapse of the star is prevented by radiation pressure resulting from electroweak burning; that is, the energy released by the conversion of quarks into leptons through the electroweak force. This proposed process might occur in a volume at the star's core approximately the size of an apple, containing about two Earth masses, and reaching temperatures on the order of 10¹⁵ K (1 PK). Electroweak stars could be identified through the equal number of neutrinos emitted of all three generations, taking into account neutrino oscillation.

Preon stars

A preon star is a proposed type of compact star made of preons, a group of hypothetical subatomic particles. Preon stars would be expected to have huge densities, exceeding 10²³ kg/m³. They may have greater densities than quark stars, and they would be heavier but smaller than white dwarfs and neutron stars.

Boson stars

Conventional stars are formed from mostly protons and electrons, which are fermions, but also contain a large proportion of helium-4 nuclei, which are bosons, and smaller amounts of various heavier nuclei, which can be either. A boson star is a hypothetical astronomical object formed out of particles called bosons For this type of star to exist, there must be a stable type of boson with self-repulsive interaction; one possible candidate particle is the still-hypothetical "axion" (which is also a candidate for the not-yet-detected "non-baryonic dark matter" particles, which appear to compose roughly 25% of the mass of the Universe). It is theorized that unlike normal stars (which emit radiation due to gravitational pressure and nuclear fusion), boson stars would be transparent and invisible. The immense gravity of a compact boson star would bend light around the object, creating an empty region resembling the shadow of a black hole's event horizon. Like a black hole, a boson star would absorb ordinary matter from its surroundings, but because of the transparency, matter (which would probably heat up and emit radiation) would be visible at its center. Rotating boson star models are also possible. Unlike black holes these have quantized angular momentum, and their energy density profiles are torus-shaped, which can be understood as a result of deformation due to centrifugal forces.

There is no significant evidence that such stars exist. However, it may become possible to detect them by the gravitational radiation emitted by a pair of co-orbiting boson stars. GW190521, thought to be the most energetic black hole merger ever recorded, may be the head-on collision of two boson stars. In addition, gravitational wave signals from compact binary boson star mergers can be degenerate with those from black hole mergers, suggesting that some gravitational wave observations interpreted as originating in a black hole binary could really originate in a boson star binary. The invisible companion to a Sun-like star identified by Gaia mission could be a black hole or either a boson star or an exotic star of other types.

Boson stars may have formed through gravitational collapse during the primordial stages of the Big Bang. At least in theory, a supermassive boson star could exist at the core of a galaxy, which may explain many of the observed properties of active galactic cores. However, more recent general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations, combined with imaging performed by the Event Horizon Telescope, is believed to have largely ruled out the possibility that Sagittarius A*, the supermassive object at the center of the Milky Way, could be a boson star.

Bound states in cosmological bosonic fields have also been proposed as an alternative to dark matter. The dark matter haloes surrounding most galaxies might be viewed as enormous "boson stars."

Compact boson stars and boson shells are often modelled using massive bosonic fields, such as complex scalar fields and U(1) gauge fields, coupled to gravity. The presence of a positive or negative cosmological constant in the theory facilitates a study of these objects in de Sitter and anti-de Sitter spaces.

By changing the potential associated with the matter model, different families of boson star models can be obtained. The so-called solitonic potential, which introduces a degenerate vacuum state at a finite value of the field amplitude, can be used to construct boson star models so compact that they possess a pair of photon orbits, one of which is stable. Because they trap light, such boson stars could mimic much of the observational phenomenology of black holes.

Boson stars composed of elementary particles with spin-1 have been labelled Proca stars.

Planck stars

Main article: Planck star

In loop quantum gravity, a Planck star is a hypothetically possible astronomical object that is created when the energy density of a collapsing star reaches the Planck energy density. Under these conditions, assuming gravity and spacetime are quantized, there arises a repulsive "force" derived from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. In other words, if gravity and spacetime are quantized, the accumulation of mass-energy inside the Planck star cannot collapse beyond this limit to form a gravitational singularity because it would violate the uncertainty principle for spacetime itself.

Q-stars

Q-stars are hypothetical objects that originate from supernovae or the big bang. They are theorized to be massive enough to bend space-time to a degree such that some, but not all light could escape from its surface. These are predicted to be denser than neutron stars or even quark stars.

Dark stars

In Newtonian mechanics, objects dense enough to trap any emitted light are called dark stars, as opposed to black holes in general relativity. However, the same name is used for hypothetical ancient "stars" which derived energy from dark matter. Quantum effects may prevent true black holes from forming and give rise instead to dense entities called black stars.

Electroweak interaction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroweak_interaction

In particle physics, the electroweak interaction or electroweak force is the unified description of two of the fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism (electromagnetic interaction) and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very different at everyday low energies, the theory models them as two different aspects of the same force. Above the unification energy, on the order of 246 GeV, they would merge into a single force. Thus, if the temperature is high enough – approximately 10¹⁵ K – then the electromagnetic force and weak force merge into a combined electroweak force.

During the quark epoch (shortly after the Big Bang), the electroweak force split into the electromagnetic and weak force. It is thought that the required temperature of 10¹⁵ K has not been seen widely throughout the universe since before the quark epoch, and currently the highest human-made temperature in thermal equilibrium is around 5.5×10¹² K (from the Large Hadron Collider).

Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg were awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to the unification of the weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, known as the Weinberg–Salam theory. The existence of the electroweak interactions was experimentally established in two stages, the first being the discovery of neutral currents in neutrino scattering by the Gargamelle collaboration in 1973, and the second in 1983 by the UA1 and the UA2 collaborations that involved the discovery of the W and Z gauge bosons in proton–antiproton collisions at the converted Super Proton Synchrotron. In 1999, Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman were awarded the Nobel prize for showing that the electroweak theory is renormalizable.

History

After the Wu experiment in 1956 discovered parity violation in the weak interaction, a search began for a way to relate the weak and electromagnetic interactions. Extending his doctoral advisor Julian Schwinger's work, Sheldon Glashow first experimented with introducing two different symmetries, one chiral and one achiral, and combined them such that their overall symmetry was unbroken. This did not yield a renormalizable theory, and its gauge symmetry had to be broken by hand as no spontaneous mechanism was known, but it predicted a new particle, the Z boson. This received little notice, as it matched no experimental finding.

In 1964, Salam and John Clive Ward had the same idea, but predicted a massless photon and three massive gauge bosons with a manually broken symmetry. Later around 1967, while investigating spontaneous symmetry breaking, Weinberg found a set of symmetries predicting a massless, neutral gauge boson. Initially rejecting such a particle as useless, he later realized his symmetries produced the electroweak force, and he proceeded to predict rough masses for the W and Z bosons. Significantly, he suggested this new theory was renormalizable. In 1971, Gerard 't Hooft proved that spontaneously broken gauge symmetries are renormalizable even with massive gauge bosons.

Formulation

Main article: Mathematical formulation of the Standard Model

Weinberg's weak mixing angle θ_W, and relation between coupling constants g, g′, and e. Adapted from Lee (1981).

The pattern of weak isospin, T₃, and weak hypercharge, Y_W, of the known elementary particles, showing the electric charge, Q, along the weak mixing angle. The neutral Higgs field (circled) breaks the electroweak symmetry and interacts with other particles to give them mass. Three components of the Higgs field become part of the massive W and Z bosons.

Mathematically, electromagnetism is unified with the weak interactions as a Yang–Mills field with an SU(2) × U(1) gauge group, which describes the formal operations that can be applied to the electroweak gauge fields without changing the dynamics of the system. These fields are the weak isospin fields W₁, W₂, and W₃, and the weak hypercharge field B. This invariance is known as electroweak symmetry.

The generators of SU(2) and U(1) are given the name weak isospin (labeled T) and weak hypercharge (labeled Y) respectively. These then give rise to the gauge bosons that mediate the electroweak interactions – the three W bosons of weak isospin (W₁, W₂, and W₃), and the B boson of weak hypercharge, respectively, all of which are "initially" massless. These are not physical fields yet, before spontaneous symmetry breaking and the associated Higgs mechanism.

In the Standard Model, the observed physical particles, the W^±
and Z⁰
bosons, and the photon, are produced through the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the electroweak symmetry SU(2) × U(1)_Y to U(1)_em, effected by the Higgs mechanism (see also Higgs boson), an elaborate quantum-field-theoretic phenomenon that "spontaneously" alters the realization of the symmetry and rearranges degrees of freedom.

The electric charge arises as the particular linear combination (nontrivial) of Y_W (weak hypercharge) and the T₃ component of weak isospin (${\displaystyle Q=T_3+\frac{1}{2}{Y}_{\mathrm{W}}}$) that does not couple to the Higgs boson. That is to say: the Higgs and the electromagnetic field have no effect on each other, at the level of the fundamental forces ("tree level"), while any other combination of the hypercharge and the weak isospin must interact with the Higgs. This causes an apparent separation between the weak force, which interacts with the Higgs, and electromagnetism, which does not. Mathematically, the electric charge is a specific combination of the hypercharge and T₃ outlined in the figure.

U(1)_em (the symmetry group of electromagnetism only) is defined to be the group generated by this special linear combination, and the symmetry described by the U(1)_em group is unbroken, since it does not directly interact with the Higgs.

The above spontaneous symmetry breaking makes the W₃ and B bosons coalesce into two different physical bosons with different masses – the Z⁰
boson, and the photon (γ),

${\displaystyle \left(\begin{array}{c}\gamma \\ Z^0\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\cos {\theta }_{\text{W}}& \sin {\theta }_{\text{W}}\\ -\sin {\theta }_{\text{W}}& \cos {\theta }_{\text{W}}\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}B\\ W_3\end{array}\right),}$

where θ_W is the weak mixing angle. The axes representing the particles have essentially just been rotated, in the (W₃, B) plane, by the angle θ_W. This also introduces a mismatch between the mass of the Z⁰
and the mass of the W^±
particles (denoted as m_Z and m_W, respectively),

${\displaystyle m_{\text{Z}}=\frac{m_{\text{W}}}{\cos {\theta }_{\text{W}}}.}$

The W₁ and W₂ bosons, in turn, combine to produce the charged massive bosons W^±
:

${\displaystyle W^{\pm }=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(W_1\mp i{W}_2).}$

Lagrangian

Before electroweak symmetry breaking

The Lagrangian for the electroweak interactions is divided into four parts before electroweak symmetry breaking manifests,

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{E}\mathrm{W}}={\mathcal{L}}_g+{\mathcal{L}}_f+{\mathcal{L}}_h+{\mathcal{L}}_y.}$

The ${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_g}$ term describes the interaction between the three W vector bosons and the B vector boson,

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_g=-\frac{1}{4}{W}_a^{\mu \nu }{W}_{\mu \nu }^a-\frac{1}{4}{B}^{\mu \nu }{B}_{\mu \nu },}$

where ${\displaystyle W_a^{\mu \nu }}$ (${\displaystyle a=1,2,3}$) and ${\displaystyle B^{\mu \nu }}$ are the field strength tensors for the weak isospin and weak hypercharge gauge fields.

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_f}$ is the kinetic term for the Standard Model fermions. The interaction of the gauge bosons and the fermions are through the gauge covariant derivative,

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_f={\overline{Q}}_{j}iD/Q_j+{\overline{u}}_{j}iD/u_j+{\overline{d}}_{j}iD/d_j+{\overline{L}}_{j}iD/L_j+{\overline{e}}_{j}iD/e_j,}$

where the subscript j sums over the three generations of fermions; Q, u, and d are the left-handed doublet, right-handed singlet up, and right handed singlet down quark fields; and L and e are the left-handed doublet and right-handed singlet electron fields. The Feynman slash ${\displaystyle D/}$ means the contraction of the 4-gradient with the Dirac matrices, defined as

${\displaystyle D/\equiv {\gamma }^{\mu }{D}_{\mu },}$

and the covariant derivative (excluding the gluon gauge field for the strong interaction) is defined as

${\displaystyle D_{\mu }\equiv {\mathrm{\partial }}_{\mu }-i\frac{g^{\prime }}{2}Y{B}_{\mu }-i\frac{g}{2}{T}_j{W}_{\mu }^j.}$

Here ${\displaystyle Y}$ is the weak hypercharge and the ${\displaystyle T_j}$ are the components of the weak isospin.

The ${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_h}$ term describes the Higgs field ${\displaystyle h}$ and its interactions with itself and the gauge bosons,

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_h=|D_{\mu }h{|}^2-\lambda {\left(|h{|}^2-\frac{v^2}{2}\right)}^2,}$

where ${\displaystyle v}$ is the vacuum expectation value.

The ${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_y}$ term describes the Yukawa interaction with the fermions,

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_y=-y_u^{ij}{ϵ}^{ab}{h}_b^{†}{\overline{Q}}_{ia}{u}_j^c-y_d^{ij}h{\overline{Q}}_i{d}_j^c-y_e^{ij}h{\overline{L}}_i{e}_j^c+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.,}$

and generates their masses, manifest when the Higgs field acquires a nonzero vacuum expectation value, discussed next. The ${\displaystyle y_k^{ij},}$ for ${\displaystyle k\in \{\mathrm{u},\mathrm{d},\mathrm{e}\},}$ are matrices of Yukawa couplings.

After electroweak symmetry breaking

The Lagrangian reorganizes itself as the Higgs field acquires a non-vanishing vacuum expectation value dictated by the potential of the previous section. As a result of this rewriting, the symmetry breaking becomes manifest. In the history of the universe, this is believed to have happened shortly after the hot big bang, when the universe was at a temperature 159.5±1.5 GeV (assuming the Standard Model of particle physics).

Due to its complexity, this Lagrangian is best described by breaking it up into several parts as follows.

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{E}\mathrm{W}}={\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{K}}+{\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{N}}+{\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{C}}+{\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{H}}+{\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{H}\mathrm{V}}+{\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{W}\mathrm{W}\mathrm{V}}+{\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{W}\mathrm{W}\mathrm{V}\mathrm{V}}+{\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{Y}}.}$

The kinetic term ${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_K}$ contains all the quadratic terms of the Lagrangian, which include the dynamic terms (the partial derivatives) and the mass terms (conspicuously absent from the Lagrangian before symmetry breaking)

${\displaystyle \begin{array}{r}{\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{K}}=\sum _f\overline{f}(i\mathrm{\partial }/-m_f)f-\frac{1}{4}{A}_{\mu \nu }{A}^{\mu \nu }-\frac{1}{2}{W}_{\mu \nu }^{+}{W}^{-\mu \nu }+m_W^2{W}_{\mu }^{+}{W}^{-\mu }\\ -\frac{1}{4}{Z}_{\mu \nu }{Z}^{\mu \nu }+\frac{1}{2}{m}_Z^2{Z}_{\mu }{Z}^{\mu }+\frac{1}{2}({\mathrm{\partial }}^{\mu }H)({\mathrm{\partial }}_{\mu }H)-\frac{1}{2}{m}_H^2{H}^2,\end{array}}$

where the sum runs over all the fermions of the theory (quarks and leptons), and the fields ${\displaystyle A_{\mu \nu },}$ ${\displaystyle Z_{\mu \nu },}$ ${\displaystyle W_{\mu \nu }^{-},}$ and ${\displaystyle W_{\mu \nu }^{+}\equiv (W_{\mu \nu }^{-}{)}^{†}}$ are given as

${\displaystyle X_{\mu \nu }^a={\mathrm{\partial }}_{\mu }{X}_{\nu }^a-{\mathrm{\partial }}_{\nu }{X}_{\mu }^a+g{f}^{abc}{X}_{\mu }^b{X}_{\nu }^c,}$

with ${\displaystyle X}$ to be replaced by the relevant field (${\displaystyle A,}$ ${\displaystyle Z,}$ ${\displaystyle W^{\pm }}$) and f ^abc by the structure constants of the appropriate gauge group.

The neutral current ${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{N}}}$ and charged current ${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{C}}}$ components of the Lagrangian contain the interactions between the fermions and gauge bosons,

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{N}}=e{J}_{\mu }^{\mathrm{e}\mathrm{m}}{A}^{\mu }+\frac{g}{\cos {\theta }_W}(J_{\mu }^3-{\sin }^2{\theta }_W{J}_{\mu }^{\mathrm{e}\mathrm{m}})Z^{\mu },}$

where ${\displaystyle e=g\sin {\theta }_{\mathrm{W}}=g^{\prime }\cos {\theta }_{\mathrm{W}}.}$ The electromagnetic current ${\displaystyle J_{\mu }^{\mathrm{e}\mathrm{m}}}$ is

${\displaystyle J_{\mu }^{\mathrm{e}\mathrm{m}}=\sum _f{q}_f\overline{f}{\gamma }_{\mu }f,}$

where ${\displaystyle q_f}$ is the fermions' electric charges. The neutral weak current ${\displaystyle J_{\mu }^3}$ is

${\displaystyle J_{\mu }^3=\sum _f{T}_f^3\overline{f}{\gamma }_{\mu }\frac{1-{\gamma }^5}{2}f,}$

where ${\displaystyle T_f^3}$ is the fermions' weak isospin.

The charged current part of the Lagrangian is given by

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{C}}=-\frac{g}{\sqrt{2}}\left[{\overline{u}}_i{\gamma }^{\mu }\frac{1-{\gamma }^5}{2}{M}_{ij}^{\mathrm{C}\mathrm{K}\mathrm{M}}{d}_j+{\overline{\nu }}_i{\gamma }^{\mu }\frac{1-{\gamma }^5}{2}{e}_i\right]W_{\mu }^{+}+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.,}$

where ${\displaystyle \nu }$ is the right-handed singlet neutrino field, and the CKM matrix ${\displaystyle M_{ij}^{\mathrm{C}\mathrm{K}\mathrm{M}}}$ determines the mixing between mass and weak eigenstates of the quarks.

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{H}}}$ contains the Higgs three-point and four-point self interaction terms,

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{H}}=-\frac{g{m}_{\mathrm{H}}^2}{4m_{\mathrm{W}}}{H}^3-\frac{g^2{m}_{\mathrm{H}}^2}{32m_{\mathrm{W}}^2}{H}^4.}$

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{H}\mathrm{V}}}$ contains the Higgs interactions with gauge vector bosons,

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{H}\mathrm{V}}=\left(g{m}_{\mathrm{H}\mathrm{V}}+\frac{g^2}{4}{H}^2\right)\left(W_{\mu }^{+}{W}^{-\mu }+\frac{1}{2{\cos }^2{\theta }_{\mathrm{W}}}{Z}_{\mu }{Z}^{\mu }\right).}$

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{W}\mathrm{W}\mathrm{V}}}$ contains the gauge three-point self interactions,

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{W}\mathrm{W}\mathrm{V}}=-ig\left[\left(W_{\mu \nu }^{+}{W}^{-\mu }-W^{+\mu }{W}_{\mu \nu }^{-}\right)\left(A^{\nu }\sin {\theta }_{\mathrm{W}}-Z^{\nu }\cos {\theta }_{\mathrm{W}}\right)+W_{\nu }^{-}{W}_{\mu }^{+}\left(A^{\mu \nu }\sin {\theta }_{\mathrm{W}}-Z^{\mu \nu }\cos {\theta }_{\mathrm{W}}\right)\right].}$

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{W}\mathrm{W}\mathrm{V}\mathrm{V}}}$ contains the gauge four-point self interactions,

${\displaystyle \begin{array}{rl}{\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{W}\mathrm{W}\mathrm{V}\mathrm{V}}=-\frac{g^2}{4}\{& [2W_{\mu }^{+}{W}^{-\mu }+(A_{\mu }\sin {\theta }_{\mathrm{W}}-Z_{\mu }\cos {\theta }_{\mathrm{W}}{)}^2{]}^2\\ & -[W_{\mu }^{+}{W}_{\nu }^{-}+W_{\nu }^{+}{W}_{\mu }^{-}+\left(A_{\mu }\sin {\theta }_{\mathrm{W}}-Z_{\mu }\cos {\theta }_{\mathrm{W}}\right)\left(A_{\nu }\sin {\theta }_{\mathrm{W}}-Z_{\nu }\cos {\theta }_{\mathrm{W}}\right){]}^2\}.\end{array}}$

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{Y}}}$ contains the Yukawa interactions between the fermions and the Higgs field,

${\displaystyle {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{Y}}=-\sum _f\frac{g{m}_f}{2m_{\mathrm{W}}}\overline{f}fH.}$