Thermal conductivity of dense quark matter and cooling of stars

Abstract

The thermal conductivity of the color-flavor locked phase of dense quark matter is calculated. The dominant contribution to the conductivity comes from photons and Nambu-Goldstone bosons associated with breaking of baryon number which are trapped in the quark core. Because of their very large mean free path the conductivity is also very large. The cooling of the quark core arises mostly from the heat flux across the surface of direct contact with the nuclear matter. As the thermal conductivity of the neighboring layer is also high, the whole interior of the star should be nearly isothermal. Our results imply that the cooling time of compact stars with color-flavor locked quark cores is similar to that of ordinary neutron stars.