The puzzling phenomenon of pulsar kicks, i.e. the observed large escape velocities of pulsars out of supernova remnants, is examined for compact stars with a strange quark matter core. The direct Urca process in quark matter is studied in the presence of a strong magnetic field. Conditions for an asymmetric emission of the produced neutrinos are worked out in detail, giving constraints on the t...

We analyze the phases of dense quark matter at nonzero quark masses. We map out the phase diagrams for charged quark matter as well as charge neutral matter containing leptons. We find that the Color Flavor Locked (CFL) phase is unlikely to ever occur in nature. Various color superconducting meson condensed phases may play a role in neutron star cores, however, in agreement with the analysis of...

What is the ground state of ordinary hadronic matter if it is compressed to baryon densities several times larger than nuclear matter saturation density? This theoretical question, which has important applications to the physics of neutron stars, has led to the discovery of several novel and unusual phases of QCD. At zero baryon density chiral symmetry is broken by a condensate of quark-anti-qu...

We discuss properties of quark matter at finite baryon densities and zero temperature in a Vlasov approach. We use a screened interquark Richardson's potential consistent with the indications of Lattice QCD calculations. We analyze the choices of the quark masses and the parameters entering the potential which reproduce the binding energy (B.E.) of infinite nuclear matter. There is a transition...