Universal proto-neutron-star accretion-rate behavior

Determine the universal behavior of the mass-accretion rate \(\dot{M}_b(t)\) during proto-neutron-star evolution, in order to establish its impact on the quark-bubble nucleation process during a first-order hadron-to-quark phase transition.

Background

The paper models the proto-neutron-star compression history phenomenologically through the growth of the stellar baryon mass $M_b(t)$. The accretion rate $\dot{M}_b(t)$ controls how rapidly the star moves along the metastable hadronic branch, thereby affecting the pressure overcompression, the nucleation time, and the resulting bubble population and gravitational-wave signal.

Because the accretion history is determined by the details of stellar collapse and is not known to have a universal form, the analysis samples a constant accretion rate over a prescribed range rather than deriving it from a general dynamical model. Establishing the universal behavior of $\dot{M}_b(t)$ would therefore improve predictions of phase-transition timing and associated multimessenger signals.