Color Superconductivity

Theory of Quark Matter at High Density

At high densities/pressures, an assembly of deconfined quarks behaves like a superfluid and sometimes a superconductor with critical temperatures in the TeraKelvin range. This work explores the effects of a large magnetic field and temperature fluctuations on the gap. Large magnetic fields stress the charge neutral gapped phase, while promoting magnetic catalysis. Temperature fluctuations can actually assist pairing between quarks with mismatched Fermi surfaces while it moderates magnetic catalysis. Our best chance of discovering color superconductivity may lie with Neutron star observations.

Want to learn more about Superfluidity and Superconductivity in Quark Matter? Read this excellent review (now introduction!) from 2007 CSC_Review_2007

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Strange Quark Matter

Quark-Novae: A bold paradigm in high-energy Astrophysics

Could the matter we see around us be in a long-lived metastable state by cosmological accident? What special conditions could trigger a spontaneous conversion of a lump of nuclear matter to a lower energy state? Out of these questions came the Quark-nova project, a collaboration centered at the University of Calgary that boldly explores the astrophysical implications of such a conversion in the high-density environment of a neutron star. In our latest work, we studied the hydrodynamics of the conversion and found that it can be quite robust, requiring only a seed of stable quark matter to form, and basic weak-decay Physics. Whether the conversion is strong enough to trigger an explosion that can have observable consequences has to be verified through multi-dimensional simulations.

Learn more about the Quark-Nova here here.

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Gravitational Waves

Neutron star oscillations

Gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime, give us valuable information about neutron stars and black holes. As neutron stars merge, or even when they vibrate in special ways, they produce gravitational waves that can be analyzed to determine the nature of matter at extreme densities. This exciting field combines fundamental nuclear physics of neutron stars with General Relativity and fluid mechanics, making it a rich subject of current research.

See the LIGO collaboration's webpage for latest announcements and developments.

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Nucleosynthesis

Sensitivity studies of the r-process

Any simulation of the r-process is affected by uncertainties in our present knowledge of nuclear physics quantities and astrophysical conditions. Using descriptive statistics, we assess a set of metrics used in previous sensitivity studies, as well as a new logarithmic measure, to quantify specific nuclides that would be most worthwhile to measure experimentally.

Read about how neutron star mergers are connected to the r-process here.

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Hot Jupiters

Jupiter-size planets around other stars seem to be closer to their parent stars and larger than our own. We propose an internal mechanism for radius inflation based on deuterium fusion in rock-ice core of gas giants, extrapolating from laboratory data on Coulomb screening effects in deuterated targets.

Read about hot Jupiters and other kinds of exoplanets here.

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Coming Soon

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