The third family of compact stars with the color-flavor locked quark core
In this paper, we study the third family of compact stars with the color-flavor locked (CFL) quark core. The relativistic mean field model is used for hadronic matter and the MIT bag model for CFL quark matter. The results of the calculation show a transitional behavior that goes from the hadron star range, through the transition range, into the CFL quark star range. In the transition range, the third family of compact stars with the CFL quark matter core is found in the wide range of the CFL energy gap 100 MeV⩽Δ<150 MeV. By comparing with early investigations, we argue that the greatest possible third family of compact stars may be the hybrid stars with the CFL quark core.