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Concept
Nuclear matter
Summary
Nuclear matter is an idealized system of interacting nucleons (protons and neutrons) that exists in several phases of exotic matter that, as of yet, are not fully established. It is not matter in an atomic nucleus, but a hypothetical substance consisting of a huge number of protons and neutrons held together by only nuclear forces and no Coulomb forces. Volume and the number of particles are infinite, but the ratio is finite. Infinite volume implies no surface effects and translational invariance (only differences in position matter, not absolute positions).
A common idealization is symmetric nuclear matter, which consists of equal numbers of protons and neutrons, with no electrons.
When nuclear matter is compressed to sufficiently high density, it is expected, on the basis of the asymptotic freedom of quantum chromodynamics, that it will become quark matter, which is a degenerate Fermi gas of quarks.
Some authors use "nuclear matter" in a broader sense, and refer to the model described above as "infinite nuclear matter", and consider it as a "toy model", a testing ground for analytical techniques. However, the composition of a neutron star, which requires more than neutrons and protons, is not necessarily locally charge neutral, and does not exhibit translation invariance, often is differently referred to, for example, as neutron star matter or stellar matter and is considered distinct from nuclear matter. In a neutron star, pressure rises from zero (at the surface) to an unknown large value in the center.
Methods capable of treating finite regions have been applied to stars and to atomic nuclei. One such model for finite nuclei is the liquid drop model, which includes surface effects and Coulomb interactions.
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Related publications (4)
Related concepts (3)
Strange matter
Strange matter (or strange quark matter) is quark matter containing strange quarks. In extreme environments, strange matter is hypothesized to occur in the core of neutron stars, or, more speculatively, as isolated droplets that may vary in size from femtometers (strangelets) to kilometers, as in the hypothetical strange stars. At high enough density, strange matter is expected to be color superconducting. Ordinary matter, also referred to as atomic matter, is composed of atoms, with nearly all matter concentrated in the atomic nuclei.
Numerical sign problem
In applied mathematics, the numerical sign problem is the problem of numerically evaluating the integral of a highly oscillatory function of a large number of variables. Numerical methods fail because of the near-cancellation of the positive and negative contributions to the integral. Each has to be integrated to very high precision in order for their difference to be obtained with useful accuracy. The sign problem is one of the major unsolved problems in the physics of many-particle systems.
QCD matter
Quark matter or QCD matter (quantum chromodynamic) refers to any of a number of hypothetical phases of matter whose degrees of freedom include quarks and gluons, of which the prominent example is quark-gluon plasma. Several series of conferences in 2019, 2020, and 2021 were devoted to this topic. Quarks are liberated into quark matter at extremely high temperatures and/or densities, and some of them are still only theoretical as they require conditions so extreme that they cannot be produced in any laboratory, especially not at equilibrium conditions.