Several different conceptualizations of entropy are examined: thermal, probabilistic, quantum-mechanical, information theoretic, black-hole, and chaotic. The unifying nature of entropy in all physical processes and recent cosmological advances are discussed.

We explore the chemical potential of a QCD-motivated van der Waals (VDW) phase change model for the six-quark color-singlet, strangeness S = −2 particle known as the hexaquark with quark content (uuddss). The hexaquark may have internal structure, indicated by short range correlations that allow for non-color-singlet diquark and triquark configurations whose interactions will change the magnitude of the chemical potential. In the multicomponent VDW Equation of State (EoS), the quark-quark particle interaction terms are sensitive to the QCD color factor, causing the pairing of these terms to give different interaction strengths for their respective contributions to the chemical potential. This results in a critical temperature near 163 MeV for the color-singlet states and tens of MeV below this for various mixed diquark and triquark states. The VDW chemical potential is also sensitive to the number density, leading to chemical potential isotherms that exhibit spinodal extrema, which also depend upon the internal hexaquark configurations. These extrema determine regions of metastability for the mixed states near the critical point. We use this chemical potential with the chemical potential-modified TOV equations to investigate the properties of hexaquark formation in cold compact stellar cores in beta equilibrium. We find thresholds for hexaquark layers and changes in maximum mass values that are consistent with observations from high mass compact stellar objects such as PSR 09043 + 10 and GW 190814. In general, we find that the VDW-TOV model has an upper stability mass and radius bound for a chemical potential of 1340 MeV with a compactness of C~0.2.

We consider a QCD cold-plasma-motivated Equation of State (EOS) to examine the impact of an Anomalous Magnetic Moment (AMM) coupling and small shape deformations on the static oblate and prolate core shapes of quark stars. Using the Fogaça QCD-motivated EOS, which shifts from the high-temperature, low-chemical-potential quark–gluon plasma environment to the low-temperature, high-chemical-potential quark stellar core environment, we consider the impact of an AMM coupling with a metric-induced shape deformation parameter in the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkov (TOV) equations. The AMM coupling includes a phenomenological scaling that accounts for the weak and strong field characteristics in dense matter. The EOS is developed using a hard gluon and soft gluon decomposition of the gluon field tensor and using a mean-field effective mass for the gluons. The AMM is considered using the Dirac spin tensor coupled to the EM field tensor with quark-flavor-based magnetic moments. The shape parameter is introduced in a metric ansatz that represents oblate and prolate static stellar cores for modified TOV equations. These equations are numerically solved for the final mass and radius states, representing the core collapse of a massive star with a phase transition leading to an unbound quark–gluon plasma. We find that the combined shape parameter and AMM effects can alter the coupled EOS–TOV equations, resulting in an increase in the final mass and a decrease in the final equatorial radius without collapsing the core into a black hole and without violating causality constraints; we find maximum mass values in the range 1.6 M_ʘ < M < 2.5 M_ʘ. These states are consistent with some astrophysical, high-mass magnetar/pulsar and gravity wave systems and may provide evidence for a core that has undergone a quark–gluon phase transition such as PSR 0943 + 10 and the secondary from the GW 190814 event.