Seminar in Hadronic Physics

The Hadronic-to-Quark-Matter Combustion (HQMC) as a reactive-diffusive-hydrodynamic problem

Rachid Ouyed

University of Calgary

A talk about our numerical investigation of the micro-physics of the HQMC and plausible implications to explosive Astrophysics (the macro-physics). I will describe unique properties of HQMC (e.g. non-premixed and  diffusion-driven conversion) and discuss non-linear coupling of leptonic weak interactions to hydrodynamics. This makes HQMC front prone to a novel (de-leptonization) instability which can wrinkle it and trigger standard hydro instabilities. We find that the details of the leptonic weak interactions are at the very least as important as the details of the high density matter Equation-of-State. In some regimes and at high chemical potential (e.g., in the core of neutron stars) explosive HQMC solutions are possible with interesting implications to high-energy Astrophysics which currently suffers from an energy problem.