科研之友
微信
新浪微博
Facebook
分享链接
摘要
Compact stars made of quark matter, rather than confined hadronic matter, are expected to form a color superconductor. This superconductor ought to be threaded with rotational-vortex lines, within which the star's interior magnetic field is at least partially confined. The vortices (and thus magnetic flux) would be expelled from the star during stellar spin-down, leading to magnetic reconnection at the surface of the star and the prolific production of thermal energy. In this paper, we show that this energy release can reheat quark stars to exceptionally high temperatures, such as observed for soft gamma repeaters, anomalous x-ray pulsars, and x-ray dim isolated neutron stars. Moreover, our numerical investigations of the temperature evolution, spin-down rate, and magnetic field behavior of such superconducting quark stars suggest that soft gamma repeaters, anomalous x-ray pulsars, and x-ray dim isolated neutron stars may be linked ancestrally. Finally, we discuss the possibility of a time delay before the star enters the color-superconducting phase, which can be used to estimate the density at which quarks deconfine. From observations, we find this density to be of the order of 5 times that of nuclear saturation.
- 出版日期2010-2-15
