Dynamics of semi-superfluid fluxtubes in color-flavor locked quark matter

Physics Department, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130 USA

^a e-mail: alford@physics.wustl.edu
^b e-mail: windisch@physics.wustl.edu

Published online: 22 March 2017

Abstract

At very high densities, as for example in the core of a neutron star, matter may appear in the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase, which is a superfluid. This phase features topologically stable vortex solutions, which arise in a spinning superfluid as localized configurations carrying quanta of angular momentum. Despite the topological stability of these vortices they are not the lowest energy state of the system at neutron star densities and decay into triplets of semi-superfluid fluxtubes. In these proceedings we report on the progress of our numerical study in the Ginzburg-Landau approach, where we investigate lattices of semi-superfluid fluxtubes. The fluxtubes are obtained through controlled decay of global vortex configurations in the presence of a gauge field. Understanding the dynamics of semi-superfluid string configurations is important in the context of angular momentum transfer from a quark matter core of a neutron star beyond the core boundary, since not vortex-, but fluxtube pinning seems to be the relevant mechanism in this scenario.