Crust breaking and the limiting rotational frequency of neutron stars
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
2018-04-16 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Nuclear Theory
Abstract
The limiting rotational frequency of neutron stars may be determined by the strength of their crusts. As a star spins up from accretion, centrifugal forces will cause the crust to fail. If the crust breaks unevenly, a rotating mass quadrupole moment will radiate gravitational waves (GW). This radiation can prevent further spin up and may be a promising source for continuous GW searches. We calculate that for a breaking strain (strength) of neutron star crust that is consistent with molecular dynamics simulations, the crust may fail at rotational frequencies in agreement with observations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1804.04952,
title = {Crust breaking and the limiting rotational frequency of neutron stars},
author = {F. J. Fattoyev and C. J. Horowitz and Hao Lu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.04952},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
5 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables