Quark-Diquark Equations of State Models: The Role of Interactions

Recent observational data suggests a high compacticity (the quotient M/R) of some "neutron" stars. Motivated by these works we revisit models based on quark-diquark degrees of freedom and address the question of whether that matter is stable against diquark disassembling and hadronization within the different models. We find that equations of state modeled as effective $\lambda \phi^{4}$ theories do not generally produce stable self-bound matter and are not suitable for constructing very compact star models, that is the matter would decay into neutron matter. We also discuss some insights obtained by including hard sphere terms in the equation of state to model repulsive interactions. We finally compare the resulting equations of state with previous models and emphasize the role of the boundary conditions at the surface of compact self-bound stars, features of a possible normal crust of the latter and related topics.