Astrophysical constraints on the confining models: The field correlator method

We explore the relevance of confinement in quark matter models for the possible quark core of neutron stars. For the quark phase, we adopt the equation of state derived with the field correlator method, extended to the zero temperature limit. For the hadronic phase, we use the microscopic Brueckner-Hartree- Fock many-body theory. We find that the currently adopted value of the gluon condensate G₂≃0.006–0.007  GeV⁴, which gives a critical temperature T_c≃170  MeV, produces maximum masses which are only marginally consistent with the observational limit, while larger masses are possible if the gluon condensate is increased.