Pseudo-Conformal Sound Speed in the Core of Compact Stars

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By implementing the putative “hadron-quark continuity” conjectured in QCD in terms of skyrmion-half-skyrmion topological change in an effective field theory for dense matter, we argue that (quasi-)baryons could “masquerade” deconfined quarks in the interior of compact stars. We interpret this phenomenon as a consequence of possible interplay between hidden scale symmetry and hidden local symmetry at high density. A surprising spin-off of the emerging symmetry that we call “pseudo-conformality” is that the long-standing puzzle of the quenched gA≈1 in nuclei can be given a simple resolution by the way the hidden symmetries impact nuclear dynamics at low density.