The critical rotation of strange stars and rapidly rotating pulsars

May, 2003
10 pages
Published in:
  • Astrophys.J.Lett. 585 (2003) L135-L138
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Abstract: (arXiv)
We utilize the bulk viscosity of interacting strange quark matter to reevaluate the damping time scale. The presence of medium effect of bulk viscosity leads to a stronger damping of r-modes, which can be over an order of magnitude for realistic parameters. We find that the r-mode instability window is narrowed due to the medium effect, and hence when a pulsar reaches the instability window it will only slow down by gravitational wave emission to a period of 1.78msec instead of 2.5msec given by early estimate. As a theoretical upper rotation limit of pulsars, the period of 1.78msec is very close to the two most rapidly spinning pulsars known, with periods of about 1.6msec.
  • quark: matter
  • matter: strangeness
  • pulsar: rotation
  • viscosity
  • dissipation
  • gravitational radiation: emission
  • star: stability
  • star: oscillation
  • numerical calculations