Shear viscosity in a CFL quark star

Abstract

We compute the mean free path and shear viscosity in the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase of dense quark matter at low temperature T, when the contributions of mesons, quarks and gluons to the transport coefficients are Boltzmann suppressed. CFL quark matter displays superfluid properties, and transport phenomena in such cold regime are dominated by phonon-phonon scattering. We study superfluid phonons within thermal field theory and compute the mean free path associated to their most relevant collision processes. Small-angle processes turn out to be more efficient in slowing transport phenomena in the CFL matter, while the mean free path relevant for the shear viscosity is less sensitive to collinear scattering due to the presence of zero modes in the Boltzmann equation. In analogy with superfluid He-4, we find the same T power law for the superfluid phonon damping rate and mean free path. Our results are relevant for the study of rotational properties of compact stars, and correct wrong estimates existing in the literature.