THERMAL EVOLUTION OF COMPACT STARS

A collection of modem, held-theoretical equations of state is applied to the investigation of cooling properties of compact stars. These com prise neutron stars as well as hypothetical strange-matter stars, made up of absolutely stable 3-flavor strange-quark matter. Various uncert ainties in the behavior of matter at supernuclear densities, e.g., hyp eronic degrees of freedom, behavior of coupling strengths in matter, p ion and meson condensation, superfluidity, transition to quark matter, absolute stability of strange-quark matter, and last but not least th e many-body technique itself are tested against the body of observed c ooling data.