Fast pulsars, strange stars
The initial motivation for this work was the reported discovery in January 1989 of a 1/2 millisecond pulsar in the remnant of the spectacular supernova, 1987A. The status of this discovery has come into grave doubt as of data taken by the same group in February, 1990. At this time we must consider that the millisecond signal does not belong to the pulsar. The existence of a neutron star in remnant of the supernova is suspected because of recent observations on the light curve of the remnant, and of course by the neutrino burst that announced the supernova. However its frequency is unknown. I can make a strong case that a pulsar rotation period of about 1 ms divides those that can be understood quite comfortably as neutron stars, and those that cannot. What we will soon learn is whether there is an invisible boundary below which pulsar periods do not fall, in which case, all are presumable neutron stars, or whether there exist sub- millisecond pulsars, which almost certainly cannot be neutron stars. Their most plausible structure is that of a self-bound star, a strange-quark-matter star. The existence of such stars would imply that the ground state of the strong interaction is not, as we usually assume, hadronic matter, but rather strange quark matter. Let us look respectively at stars that are bound only by gravity, and hypothetical stars that are self-bound, for which gravity is so to speak, icing on the cake.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley Lab., CA (USA)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE/ER
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC03-76SF00098
- OSTI ID:
- 6903945
- Report Number(s):
- LBL-28680; CONF-900295-5; ON: DE90011631; TRN: 90-016582
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 6. workshop on nuclear dynamics, Jackson Hole, WY (USA), 17-24 Feb 1990
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
GENERAL PHYSICS
PULSARS
COSMIC NEUTRINOS
GRAVITATION
NEUTRON STARS
STRANGE PARTICLES
SUPERNOVAE
COSMIC RADIATION
COSMIC RADIO SOURCES
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
ERUPTIVE VARIABLE STARS
FERMIONS
IONIZING RADIATIONS
LEPTONS
MASSLESS PARTICLES
NEUTRINOS
RADIATIONS
STARS
VARIABLE STARS
640102* - Astrophysics & Cosmology- Stars & Quasi-Stellar
Radio & X-Ray Sources