Speaker
Description
Both neutron stars and ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions probe the collective behavior of strongly interacting matter under extreme conditions. In heavy-ion collisions, it has been demonstrated that conditions are extreme enough to transmute nuclear matter into a quark-gluon plasma. Does a similar deconfinement transition occur at high densities within the cores of massive neutron stars or in binary neutron-star mergers?
In this talk, I will show how an interdisciplinary framework that synthesizes state-of-the-art information from nuclear theory, high-energy theory, and astrophysics hints at a positive answer to this question. I will also discuss how next-generation astrophysical observatories will provide important complementary probes of extreme QCD matter, alongside experiments at the EIC and LHC.