Damping of density oscillations from bulk viscosity in quark matter

We study the damping of density oscillations in the quark matter phase that might occur in compact stars. To this end we compute the bulk viscosity and the associated damping time in three-flavor quark matter, considering both nonleptonic and semileptonic electroweak processes. We use two different equations of state of quark matter, more precisely, the MIT bag model and perturbative QCD, including the leading-order corrections in the strong coupling constant. We analyze the dependence of our results on the density, temperature and value of strange quark mass in each case. We then find that the maximum of the bulk viscosity is in the range of temperature from 0.01 to 0.1 MeV for frequencies around 1 kHz, while the associated minimal damping times of the density oscillations at those temperatures might be in the range of few to hundreds milliseconds. Our results suggest that bulk viscous damping might be relevant in the postmerger phase after the collision of two neutron stars if deconfined matter is achieved in the process.