Chromo-thermal instabilities and collapse of quark stars to black holes Astrophysical Implications

We have studied the effects of temperature on the properties of strange stars. We find that the maximum mass of the strange star decreases with the increase of temperature, because at high temperatures the equation of states become softer. Moreover, if the temperature of a strange star increases keeping its baryon number fixed, its gravitational mass increases and radius decreases which leads to a limiting temperature where it turns into a black hole. These features of strange stars is a combined effect of change of gluon mass and the quark distribution function with temperature. We have discovered a new kind of radial oscillations of strange stars driven by what we named chromo-thermal instability. This instability and the related radial oscillations of the star is inherent to strange quark matter making strange stars even more exotic than neutron stars within astrophysical context. In particular, we discuss the relevance of our findings in the astrophysics of core collapse supernovae and gamma ray bursts