Antikaon condensation in neutron stars

✍ Scribed by Subrata Pal; Debades Bandyopadhyay; Walter Greiner

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 301 KB
• Volume: 674
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0375-9474
• DOI: 10.1016/s0375-9474(00)00175-5

✦ Synopsis

We investigate the condensation of charged K -meson and neutral K 0 meson in dense neutron star matter. Calculations are performed in relativistic mean field models in which both the baryonbaryon and (anti)kaon-baryon interactions are mediated by meson exchange. It is found that K 0 condensation is quite sensitive to the antikaon optical potential and depends more strongly on the nucleonic equation of state. For moderate values of antikaon potential and a rather stiff equation of state, a significant region of maximum mass star will contain K 0 meson. The critical density of K 0 condensation is always higher than that of K -condensation. With the appearance of K -and K 0 condensates, pairs of p -K -and n -K 0 are produced with equal proportion leading to a perfectly symmetric matter of nucleons and antikaons in neutron stars. Along with K -condensate, K 0 condensate makes the equation of state much softer resulting in smaller maximum mass stars compared to the case without any condensate.