What the Timing of Millisecond Pulsars Can Teach us about Their Interior

Abstract

The cores of compact stars reach the highest densities in nature and therefore could consist of novel phases of matter. We demonstrate via a detailed analysis of pulsar evolution that precise pulsar timing data can constrain the star's composition, through unstable global oscillations (r-modes) whose damping is determined by microscopic properties of the interior. If not efficiently damped, these modes emit gravitational waves that quickly spin down a millisecond pulsar. As a first application of this general method, we find that ungapped interacting quark matter is consistent with both the observed radio and x-ray data, whereas for ordinary nuclear matter some additional enhanced damping mechanism is required.

6 pages, 5 figures, version to be published in PRL

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• Color superconductivity in dense quark matter
• The Second Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog of Gamma-ray Pulsars
• Shear viscosity in neutron star cores
• A new mechanism for saturating unstable r-modes in neutron stars
• Large amplitude behavior of the bulk viscosity of dense matter
• Nonlinear Development of the R Mode Instability and the Maximum Rotation Rate of Neutron Stars

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