Study of nonstrange quark stars within a modified NJL model

Abstract

In this work, a modified Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model with proper-time regularization is employed to study the properties of hypothetical nonstrange quark stars. The coupling constant of the four-fermion interaction in the conventional NJL model is modified as $G={G}_{1}+{G}_{2}⟨\overline{\ensuremath{\psi}}\ensuremath{\psi}⟩$ to highlight the feedback of the quark propagator to the gluon propagator. To study the dependence of the equation of state (EOS) on this modification as well as the vacuum pressure, we choose nine representative EOSs for comparison. It is found that a smaller ${G}_{1}$ leads to a stiffer EOS, and a higher vacuum pressure (i.e., a smaller bag constant) yields a softer EOS at low energy density. It is further shown that the heaviest quark star under this modified NJL model satisfies not only the recent mass measurement of PSR $\mathrm{J}0740+6620$, but also the radius constraints from x-ray timing observations. The corresponding tidal deformability is also in agreement with the observations of GW170817.