Dense Matter in Compact Stars: A Pedagogical Introduction (Lecture Notes in Physics, 811)

Schmitt, Andreas

ISBN 10: 3642128653 / ISBN 13: 9783642128653

Published by Springer, 2010

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Dense Matter in Compact Stars: A Pedagogical Introduction (Lecture Notes in Physics, 811)
• Publisher: Springer
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3642128653
• ISBN 13: 9783642128653
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The purpose and motivation of these lectures can be summarized in the following two questions: • What is the ground state (and its properties) of dense matter? • What is the matter composition of a compact star? The two questions are, of course, strongly coupled to each other. Depending on your point of view, you can either consider the ?rst as the main question and the second as a consequence or application of the ?rst, or vice versa. If you are interested in fundamental questions in particle physics you may take the former point of view: you ask the question what happens to matter if you squeeze it more and more. This leads to fundamental questions because at some level of suf?cient squeezing you expect to reach the point where the fundamental degrees of freedom and their interactions become important. That is, at some point you will reach a form of matter where not molecules or atoms, but the constituents of an atom, namely neutrons, protons, and electrons, are the relevant degrees of freedom.

From the Back Cover

The purpose of these lectures is to address the following two strongly coupled issues: • What is the ground state (and its properties) of dense (quark) matter? • What is the matter composition of a compact star? In order to fulfill their primary goal - to remain both concise and accessible to the beginning graduate student or other newcomers to the field - the only prerequisites are a working knowledge of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics as well as a first course in quantum field theory. More advanced material will be introduced as the text progresses and an appendix covers basic elements of thermal quantum field theory at finite chemical potential. Instead of developing all relevant formal tools (which is not even fully possible in the regime of QCD considered here), calculations are physically motivated, making the reader familiar with the theories and technicalities by “learning by doing”. In this way these lectures will guide and prepare the reader towards further investigations and own theoretical research in this exciting field at the interface of nuclear, particle and astrophysics.