dr Thomas Klähn

Light Quarks and Heavy Neutron Stars

Recently, the mass of pulsar PSR J1614 has been determined very precisely with a value of 1.97pm0.04 solar masses. This makes it the heaviest ever observed neutron star. Moreover, this result puts tight constraints on a realistic equation of state for cold and dense matter. I will discuss to what extent this affects the possible existence of quark matter in neutron stars, what it tells us about the quark matter quation of state, and whether we can learn something about the QCD-phase transition in heavy ion collisions.