Kaon-meson coupling from SU(3) flavour symmetry and application to antikaon condensed dense matter in neutron star

Abstract

Observations of massive pulsars suggest that the central density of neutron stars can exceed several times the nuclear saturation density, creating a favourable environment for the appearance of exotic states, such as strange and non-strange baryons, meson condensates, and deconfined quark matter. The antikaon condensate is the most studied and plausible candidate among meson condensates. However, little is known about the exact interaction mechanisms between antikaons and mediator mesons. In this work, we investigate these interactions by, for the first time, employing SU(3) flavor symmetry to study antikaon condensation in dense matter. We determine hadron couplings in the mesonic sector using SU(3) flavour symmetry. Among the three key parameters we calculate $\theta_v$, the mixing angle between the octet meson $\omega_8$ and the singlet meson $\phi_1$; the ratio of the octet to singlet couplings $z$; and leave the weight factor that balances the symmetric and antisymmetric couplings $\alpha_v$ as a free parameter to explore its impact on the system. Using this approach, we derive the couplings for antikaon interactions with both singlet and octet mesons in the nonet vector meson family and examine the corresponding implications for dense matter featuring antikaon condensation. Our findings reveal that the equation of state for dense matter becomes progressively stiffer with increasing values of $\alpha_v$, which delays the onset of antikaon condensation and increases the maximum achievable mass of neutron stars.