Related papers: Star Wreck
In many X-ray point sources on the sky, the X-ray emission arises because hydrogen and/or helium is accreted onto a neutron star from a nearby donor star. When this matter settles on the neutron star surface, it will undergo nuclear fusion.…
Starquakes probably occur in rapidly spinning or ultra high field neutron stars. In this article, we argue that highly compressed gas containing electron-positron pairs could evaporate and erupt from inside the neutron star when a crack…
We propose that the cosmological gamma ray bursts arise from the collapse of neutron stars to black holes triggered by collisions or mergers with main sequence stars. This scenario represents a cosmological history qualitatively different…
Supersymmetry implies that stable non-topological solitons, Q-balls, could form in the early universe and could make up all or part of dark matter. We show that the relic Q-balls passing through Earth can produce a detectable neutrino flux.…
Electroweak vacuum transition processes (sphalerons) in the early Universe provide a possible explanation of the baryon asymmetry. Anomaly theory suggests that these electroweak baryon number non-conserving processes are accompanied by the…
We propose a novel cosmological scenario in which baryonic neutron stars could plausibly form in the early universe. If baryogenesis initially produces an excessively-large baryon asymmetry, $Y_B \gg 10^{-10},$ the baryonic mass inside the…
We study the formation and properties of dark neutron stars in a scenario where dark matter is made up of (heavy) dark baryons in a sequestered copy of the MSSM. This scenario naturally explains the coincidence of baryonic and dark matter…
This paper argues that conversion of neutron stars to strange stars as an origin of cosmological stars in the binaries with low-mass companions. Our model may provide an explanation why the binary millisecond pulsars seem to have same low…
Gravitational, magnetic and superfluid forces can stress the crust of an evolving neutron star. Fracture of the crust under these stresses could affect the star's spin evolution and generate high-energy emission. We study the growth of…
It is proposed that gamma-ray bursts are created in the mergers of double neutron star binaries and black hole neutron star binaries at cosmological distances. Bursts with complex profiles and relatively long durations are the result of…
The phase-transition induced collapse of a neutron star to a more compact configuration (typically a ``strange'' star) and the subsequent core bounce is often invoked as a model for gamma-ray bursts. We present the results of numerical…
First results of numerical simulations are presented which compute the dynamical evolution of a neutron star with a mass slightly below the minimum stable mass by means of a new implicit (general relativistic) hydrodynamic code. We show…
In order to actually see the hadron-quark transition happening in a neutron star, we point out and study two static conditions (the transition hadronic density must be lower than the neutron star maximum hadronic density; the neutron star…
Radioactive decay of unstable atomic nuclei leads to liberation of nuclear binding energy in the forms of gamma-ray photons and secondary particles (electrons, positrons); their energy then energises surrounding matter. Unstable nuclei are…
Binary star systems containing a neutron star or a black hole with an evolved, massive star are dynamically perturbed when the latter undergoes a supernova explosion. It is possible that the natal kick received by the newly-formed neutron…
Immediately after they are born, neutron stars are characterized by an entropy per baryon of order unity and by the presence of trapped neutrinos. If the only hadrons in the star are nucleons, these effects slightly reduce the maximum mass…
Stable baryonic Q-balls, which appear in supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model, could form at the end of cosmological inflation from fragmentation of the Affleck-Dine condensate. They can be dark matter. The existing bounds rely…
The bulk viscosity in quark matter is sufficiently high to reduce the effective pressure below the corresponding vapor pressure during density perturbations in neutron stars and strange stars. This leads to mechanical instability where the…
Neutron stars, with their strong surface gravity, have interestingly short timescales for the sedimentation of heavy elements. Recent observations of unstable thermonuclear burning (observed as X-ray bursts) on the surfaces of slowly…
We infer the collapse times of long-lived neutron stars into black holes using the X-ray afterglows of 18 short gamma-ray bursts. We then apply hierarchical inference to infer properties of the neutron star equation of state and dominant…