Effects of anisotropic pressure on interacting quark star structure

Abstract: Perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (pQCD) corrections and color superconductivity predict that strongly interacting matter can reveal new physical phenomena under extreme conditions. Taking into account these interaction effects, we investigate the role of anisotropic pressure in quark stars composed of interacting quark matter. Adopting two physically well-motivated anisotropy profiles, we numerically solve the stellar structure equations in order to explore the consequences of anisotropic pressure on various macroscopic properties such as radius, gravitational mass, surface redshift, moment of inertia, tidal Love number and oscillation spectrum. Remarkably, for both anisotropy models, negative anisotropies increase the radial stability of interacting quark stars, while the opposite occurs for positive anisotropies. However, for the Bowers-Liang profile, the central density corresponding to the maximum-mass point does not coincide with the central density where the squared oscillation frequency vanishes, indicating that the existence of stable anisotropic interacting quark stars is possible beyond the maximum mass for negative anisotropies. Additionally, we compare our theoretical predictions with several observational mass-radius measurements and tidal deformability constraints, which suggest that both strong interaction effects and anisotropy effects play a crucial role in describing compact stars observed in the Universe.