Compressed Baryonic Matter: from Nuclei to Pulsars

Abstract

Our world is wonderful because of the negligible baryonic part although unknown dark matter and dark energy dominate the Universe. Those nuclei in the daily life are forbidden to fuse by compression due to the Coulomb repulse, nevertheless, it is usually unexpected in extraterrestrial extreme-environments: the gravity in a core of massive evolved star is so strong that all the other forces (including the Coulomb one) could be neglected. Compressed baryonic matter is then produced after supernova, manifesting itself as pulsar-like stars observed. The study of this compressed baryonic matter can not only be meaningful in fundamental physics (e.g., the elementary color interaction at low-energy scale, testing gravity theories, detecting nano-Hertz background gravitational waves), but has also profound implications in engineering applications (including time standard and navigation), and additionally, is focused by Chinese advanced telescopes, either terrestrial or in space. Historically, in 1930s, L. Landau speculated that dense matter at supra-nuclear density in stellar cores could be considered as gigantic nuclei (the prototype of standard model of neutron star), however, we address that the residual compact object of supernova could be of condensed matter of quark clusters. The idea that pulsars are quark-cluster stars was not ruled out during the last decade, and we are expecting to test further by future powerful facilities. (in Chinese)