Quark condensate and chiral symmetry restoration in neutron stars

Abstract

Based on an equivparticle model, we investigate the in-medium quark condensate in neutron stars. Carrying out a Taylor expansion of the nuclear binding energy to the order of ρ3, we obtain a series of EOSs for neutron star matter, which are confronted with the latest nuclear and astrophysical constraints. The in-medium quark condensate is then extracted from the constrained properties of neutron star matter, which decreases non-linearly with density. However, the chiral symmetry is only partially restored with non-vanishing quark condensates, which may vanish at a density that is out of reach for neutron stars.