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Title: Mutual Friction in a Cold Color-Flavor-Locked Superfluid and r-Mode Instabilities in Compact Stars

Journal Article · · Physical Review Letters
;  [1];  [2]
  1. Instituto de Ciencias del Espacio (IEEC/CSIC) Campus, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Facultat de Ciencies, Torre C5, E-08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona) (Spain)
  2. Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, J. W. Goethe-Universitaet, D-60438 Frankfurt am Main (Germany)

Dissipative processes acting in rotating neutron stars are essential in preventing the growth of the r-mode instability. We estimate the damping time of r modes of a hypothetical compact quark star made up by color-flavor-locked quark matter at a temperature T < or approx. 0.01 MeV. The dissipation that we consider is due to the mutual friction force between the normal and the superfluid component arising from the elastic scattering of phonons with quantized vortices. This process is the dominant one for temperatures T < or approx. 0.01 MeV, where the mean free path of phonons due to their self-interactions is larger than the radius of the star. We find that r-mode oscillations are efficiently damped by this mechanism for pulsars rotating at frequencies of the order of 1 Hz at most. Our analysis rules out the possibility that cold pulsars rotating at higher frequencies are entirely made up by color-flavor-locked quark matter.

OSTI ID:
21179973
Journal Information:
Physical Review Letters, Vol. 101, Issue 24; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.241101; (c) 2008 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0031-9007
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English