513 research outputs found
The rigidity of crystalline color superconducting quark matter
We calculate the shear modulus of crystalline color superconducting quark
matter, showing that this phase of dense, but not asymptotically dense,
three-flavor quark matter responds to shear stress like a very rigid solid. To
evaluate the shear modulus, we derive the low energy effective Lagrangian that
describes the phonons that originate from the spontaneous breaking of
translation invariance by the spatial modulation of the gap parameter .
These massless bosons describe space- and time-dependent fluctuations of the
crystal structure and are analogous to the phonons in ordinary crystals. The
coefficients of the spatial derivative terms of the phonon effective Lagrangian
are related to the elastic moduli of the crystal; the coefficients that encode
the linear response of the crystal to a shearing stress define the shear
modulus. We analyze the two particular crystal structures which are
energetically favored over a wide range of densities, in each case evaluating
the phonon effective action and the shear modulus up to order in a
Ginzburg-Landau expansion, finding shear moduli which are 20 to 1000 times
larger than those of neutron star crusts. The crystalline color superconducting
phase has long been known to be a superfluid -- by picking a phase its order
parameter breaks the quark-number symmetry spontaneously. Our results
demonstrate that this superfluid phase of matter is at the same time a rigid
solid. We close with a rough estimate of the pinning force on the rotational
vortices which would be formed embedded within this rigid superfluid upon
rotation. Our results raise the possibility that (some) pulsar glitches could
originate within a quark matter core deep within a neutron star.Comment: 38 pages, 5 figures. v3. Two new paragraphs in Section V
(Conclusion); some additional small changes. A paragraph discussing
supercurrents added in Section I (Introduction). Version to appear in Phys.
Rev.
Unusual glitch behaviours of two young pulsars
In this paper we report unusual glitches in two young pulsars, PSR J1825-0935
(B1822-09) and PSR J1835-1106. For PSR J1825-0935, a slow glitch characterised
by a temporary decrease in the slowdown rate occurred between 2000 December 31
to 2001 December 6. This event resulted in a permanent increase in frequency
with fractional size , however little
effect remained in slowdown rate. The glitch in PSR J1835-1106 occurred
abruptly in November 2001 (MJD 52220\pm3) with
and little or no change in the
slow-down rate. A significant change in apparently occurred at the
glitch with having opposite sign for the pre- and post-glitch data.Comment: Latex format, six files, 5 pages with 4 figues. accepted for MNRA
Damping of differential rotation in neutron stars
We derive the transport relaxation times for quasiparticle-vortex scattering
processes via nuclear force, relevant for the damping of differential rotation
of superfluids in the quantum liquid core of a neutron star. The proton
scattering off the neutron vortices provides the dominant resistive force on
the vortex lattice at all relevant temperatures in the phase where neutrons
only are in the paired state. If protons are superconducting, a small fraction
of hyperons and resonances in the normal state would be the dominant source of
friction on neutron and proton vortex lattices at the core temperatures K.Comment: 5 pages, Revtex, Phys. Rev. D 58, Rapid Communication, in pres
Superfluid Friction and Late-time Thermal Evolution of Neutron Stars
The recent temperature measurements of the two older isolated neutron stars
PSR 1929+10 and PSR 0950+08 (ages of and yr,
respectively) indicate that these objects are heated. A promising candidate
heat source is friction between the neutron star crust and the superfluid it is
thought to contain. We study the effects of superfluid friction on the
long-term thermal and rotational evolution of a neutron star. Differential
rotation velocities between the superfluid and the crust (averaged over the
inner crust moment of inertia) of rad s for PSR
1929+10 and rad s for PSR 0950+08 would account for their
observed temperatures. These differential velocities could be sustained by
pinning of superfluid vortices to the inner crust lattice with strengths of
1 MeV per nucleus. Pinned vortices can creep outward through thermal
fluctuations or quantum tunneling. For thermally-activated creep, the coupling
between the superfluid and crust is highly sensitive to temperature. If pinning
maintains large differential rotation ( rad s), a feedback
instability could occur in stars younger than yr causing
oscillations of the temperature and spin-down rate over a period of . For stars older than yr, however, vortex creep occurs
through quantum tunneling, and the creep velocity is too insensitive to
temperature for a thermal-rotational instability to occur. These older stars
could be heated through a steady process of superfluid friction.Comment: 26 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Ap
Microscopic structure of a vortex line in superfluid neutron star matter
The microscopic structure of an isolated vortex line in superfluid neutron
star matter is studied by solving the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. Our
calculation, which is the starting point for a microscopic calculation of
pinning forces in neutron stars, shows that the size of the vortex core varies
differently with density, and is in general smaller than assumed in some
earlier calculations of vortex pinning in neutron star crusts. The implications
of this result are discussedComment: 5 pages, 2 figure
Crystalline Color Superconductivity
In any context in which color superconductivity arises in nature, it is
likely to involve pairing between species of quarks with differing chemical
potentials. For suitable values of the differences between chemical potentials,
Cooper pairs with nonzero total momentum are favored, as was first realized by
Larkin, Ovchinnikov, Fulde and Ferrell (LOFF). Condensates of this sort
spontaneously break translational and rotational invariance, leading to gaps
which vary periodically in a crystalline pattern. Unlike the original LOFF
state, these crystalline quark matter condensates include both spin zero and
spin one Cooper pairs. We explore the range of parameters for which crystalline
color superconductivity arises in the QCD phase diagram. If in some shell
within the quark matter core of a neutron star (or within a strange quark star)
the quark number densities are such that crystalline color superconductivity
arises, rotational vortices may be pinned in this shell, making it a locus for
glitch phenomena.Comment: 40 pages, LaTeX with eps figs. v2: New paragraph on Ginzburg-Landau
treatment of LOFF phase in section 5. References added. v3: Small changes
only. Version to appear in Phys. Rev.
The braking indices in pulsar emission models
Using the method proposed in a previous paper, we calculate pulsar braking
indices in the models with torque contributions from both inner and outer
accelerating regions, assuming that the interaction between them is negligible.
We suggest that it is likely that the inverse Compton scattering induced polar
vacuum gap and the outer gap coexist in the pulsar magnetosphere. We include
the new near threshold vacuum gap models with curvature-radiation and inverse
Compton scattering induced cascades, respectively; and find that these models
can well reproduce the measured values of the braking indices.Comment: A&Ap accepted, or at
http://vega.bac.pku.edu.cn/~rxxu/publications/index_P.ht
Color Superconductivity in Compact Stars
After a brief review of the phenomena expected in cold dense quark matter,
color superconductivity and color-flavor locking, we sketch some implications
of recent developments in our understanding of cold dense quark matter for the
physics of compact stars. We give a more detailed summary of our recent work on
crystalline color superconductivity and the consequent realization that (some)
pulsar glitches may originate in quark matter.Comment: 19 pages. 2 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the ECT Workshop
on Neutron Star Interiors, Trento, Italy, June 2000. Shorter versions
contributed to the proceedings of Strong and Electroweak Matter 2000,
Marseille, France, June 2000 and to the proceedings of Strangeness 2000,
Berkeley, CA, July 2000. KR was the speaker at all three meeting
Slowly Rotating General Relativistic Superfluid Neutron Stars with Relativistic Entrainment
Neutron stars that are cold enough should have two or more
superfluids/supercondutors in their inner crusts and cores. The implication of
superfluidity/superconductivity for equilibrium and dynamical neutron star
states is that each individual particle species that forms a condensate must
have its own, independent number density current and equation of motion that
determines that current. An important consequence of the quasiparticle nature
of each condensate is the so-called entrainment effect, i.e. the momentum of a
condensate is a linear combination of its own current and those of the other
condensates. We present here the first fully relativistic modelling of slowly
rotating superfluid neutron stars with entrainment that is accurate to the
second-order in the rotation rates. The stars consist of superfluid neutrons,
superconducting protons, and a highly degenerate, relativistic gas of
electrons. We use a relativistic - mean field model for the
equation of state of the matter and the entrainment. We determine the effect of
a relative rotation between the neutrons and protons on a star's total mass,
shape, and Kepler, mass-shedding limit.Comment: 30 pages, 10 figures, uses ReVTeX
First hours of the GRB 030329 optical afterglow
We present the first results of the observations of the extremely bright
optical afterglow of gamma-ray burst (GRB) 030329 with the 1.5m Russian-Turkish
telescope RTT150 (TUBITAK National Observatory, Bakyrlytepe, Turkey). RTT150
was one of the first 1.5m-class telescopes pointed to the afterglow.
Observations were started approximately 6 hours after the burst. During the
first 5 hours of our observations the afterglow faded exactly as a power law
with index -1.19+-0.01 in each of the BVRI Bessel filters. After that, in all
BVRI filters simultaneously we observe a steepening of the power law light
curve. The power law decay index smoothly approaches the value ~= -1.9,
observed by other observatories later. This power law break occurs at t-t_0
=0.57 days and lasts for +-0.1 days. We observe no variability above the
gradual fading with the upper limits 10--1% on time scales 0.1--1000s. Spectral
flux distribution in four BVRI filters corresponds to the power law spectrum
with spectral index \alpha=0.66+-0.01. The change of the power law decay index
in the end of our observations can be interpreted as a signature of collimated
ultrarelativistic jet. The afterglow flux distribution in radio, optical and
x-rays is consistent with synchrotron spectrum. We continue our observations of
this unique object with RTT150.Comment: Astronomy Letters, Vol. 29, No. 9, p. 573; 6 pages, 5 figures;
pagination corrected; the original Russian version can be found at
http://hea.iki.rssi.ru/~br/030329/pfh030329.pd
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