Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 229, 3663–3673 (2020)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2020-000235-5

Regular Article

The special point on the hybrid star mass–radius diagram and its multi–messenger implications

¹ Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Wroclaw, 50-204 Wroclaw, Poland
² National Research Nuclear University (MEPhI), 115409 Moscow, Russia
³ Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, 141980 Dubna, Russia

^a e-mail: mateusz.cierniak@uwr.edu.pl

Received: 24 September 2020
Accepted: 27 October 2020
Published online: 21 December 2020

Abstract

We show the existence and investigate the location of the special point (SP) in which hybrid neutron star mass-radius (M-R) curves have to cross each other when they belong to a class of hybrid equation of state (EoS) constructed with generic constant–speed–of–sound (CSS) quark matter models for which the onset deconfinement is varied. We demonstrate that for a three-parameter CSS model the position of the SP in the M-R diagram is largely independent of the choice of the hadronic EoS, but in dependence on the stiffness of the quark matter EoS it spans a region that we identify. We find that the difference between the maximum mass and the SP mass depends on the mass at the onset of deconfinement so that an upper limit of 0.19 M_⊙ for this difference is obtained from which a lower limit on the radius of hybrid stars is deduced. Together with a lower limit on the radius of hadronic stars, derived from a class of reasonably soft hadronic EoS including hyperons, we identify a region in the M-R diagram which can be occupied only by hybrid stars. Accordingly, we suggest that a NICER radius measurement on the massive pulsar PSR J0740 + 6620 in the range of 8.6-11.9 km would indicate that this pulsar is a hybrid neutron star with deconfined quark matter in the inner core.