Related papers: Strangelets accelerated by pulsars in galactic cos…
In this work, we made an extensive study about the possible presence of anisotropies in strange stars. To accomplish this task, we use three different configurations for the strange matter: the unpaired matter, a two-flavor super-conducting…
Star quakes and internal phase transitions within anomalous x-ray pulsars (AXPs) and soft $\gamma$-ray repeaters (SGRs) can produce mini contractions and pulsar glitches. Shocks break out from their surface following such contractions…
We consider the galactic population of gamma-ray pulsars as possible sources of cosmic rays at and just above the ``knee'' in the observed cosmic ray spectrum at $10^{15}$--$10^{16}$ eV. We suggest that iron nuclei may be accelerated in the…
If the dark matter of our galaxy is composed of nuggets of quarks or antiquarks in a colour superconducting phase there will be a small but non-zero flux of these objects through the Earth's atmosphere. A nugget of quark matter will deposit…
Strange stars ought to exist in the universe according to the strange quark matter hypothesis, which states that matter made of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks could be the true ground state of baryonic matter rather…
Nature succeeds in accelerating extended and massive objects to relativistic velocities. Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei and in galactic superluminal sources and gamma-ray bursts fireballs have bulk Lorentz factors from a few to several…
A number of seemingly {\it exotic} phenomena seen in the highest cosmic-ray experiments are briefly discussed. We argue that they indicate existence of non-statistical fluctuations and strong correlations in the fragmentation region of…
A search for stable strange quark nuggets has been conducted in helium and argon using a high sensitivity mass spectrometer. The search was guided by a mass formula for strange quark nuggets which suggested that stable strange helium might…
Gamma rays from young pulsars and milli-second pulsars are expected to contribute to the diffuse gamma-ray emission measured by the {\it Fermi} Large Area Telescope (LAT) at high latitudes. We derive the contribution of the pulsars…
It has been over 30 years since the first suggestion that the true ground state of cold hadronic matter might be not nuclear matter but rather strange quark matter (SQM). Ever since, searches for stable SQM have been proceeding in various…
We address the production of strangelets inside neutron stars by means of high-energy neutrino interactions (sparking). Requiring that neutron stars remain as such along their lifetimes, we obtain a bound on the probability of a strangelet…
High-energy gamma rays are a valuable tool for studying particle acceleration and radiation in the magnetospheres of energetic pulsars. The six or more pulsars seen by CGRO/EGRET show that: the light curves usually have double-peak…
Contrary to young neutron stars, young strange stars are not subject to the r-mode instability which slows rapidly rotating, hot neutron stars to rotation periods near 10 ms via gravitational wave emission. Young millisecond pulsars are…
The enhanced star forming activity, typical of starburst galaxies, powers strong galactic winds expanding on kiloparsec (kpc) scales and characterized by bubble structures. Here we discuss the possibility that particle acceleration may take…
Massive stars blow powerful winds and eventually explode as supernovae. By doing so, they inject energy and momentum in the circumstellar medium, which is pushed away from the star and piles up to form a dense and expanding shell of gas.…
Radio-loud neutron stars known as pulsars allow a wide range of experimental tests for fundamental physics, ranging from the study of super-dense matter to tests of general relativity and its alternatives. As a result, pulsars provide…
Cosmic rays are the most outstanding example of accelerated particles. They are about 1\% of the total mass of the Universe, so that cosmic rays would represent by far the most important energy transformation process of the Universe.…
A remarkably precise observational relation for pulse core component widths of radio pulsars is used to derive stringent limits on pulsar radii, strongly indicating that pulsars are strange stars rather than neutron stars. This is achieved…
A quark model with running coupling and running strange quark mass, which is thermodynamically self-consistent at both high and lower densities, is presented and applied to study properties of strange quark matter and structure of compact…
We discuss the properties of two distinct forms of hypothetical strange matter, small lumps of strange quark matter (strangelets) and of hyperon matter (metastable exotic multihypernuclear objects: MEMOs), with special emphasis on their…