Eur. Phys. J. A (2014) 50: 111
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2014-14111-1

Letter

Heavy hybrid stars from multi-quark interactions

Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, P.O.B. 331, HR-10002, Zagreb, Croatia

^* e-mail: sanjinb@phy.hr

Received: 22 June 2014
Accepted: 26 June 2014
Published online: 14 July 2014

Abstract

We explore the possibility of obtaining heavy hybrid stars within the framework of the two flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model that includes 8-quark interactions in the scalar and in the vector channel. The main impact of the 8-quark scalar channel is to reduce the onset of quark matter, while the 8-quark vector channel acts to stiffen the equation of state at high densities. Within the parameter space where the 4-quark vector channel is small, and the 8-quark vector channel sizeable, stable stars with masses of 2 M _⊙ and above are found to hold quark matter in their cores.