Gravitational waves from glitch-induced f-mode oscillations in quark and neutron stars

Abstract

Matter in compact stars is dense enough that transient events within the star could have sufficiently high energies to produce detectable gravitational waves (GWs). These GWs could be used to constrain the equation of state (EoS) for matter in the star and could reveal that there is more than one type of EoS at play in the population, implying that multiple types of compact stars exist. One of these types could be quark stars, composed almost entirely of stable quark matter, and observing GWs is a way to test for the strange matter EoS. Here we explore the possibility that, if fundamental (f-) mode oscillations in pulsars are induced by a pulsar glitch, then these oscillations might produce detectable GWs. We use the existing population of pulsars and their glitches, as well as a much larger synthesized population, along with 15 EoSs (8 for neutron stars and 7 for quark stars) to generate frequencies, damping times, and GW strengths for each. We find that of the EoSs examined, all quark star EoSs produce narrower distributions of f-mode frequency than neutron star EoSs. This result, along with other elements of the data, could be used to differentiate between GWs (or other signals from f-modes) originating from neutron stars and quark stars and thus could confirm the existence of quark stars. We also find that GW astronomy is a potentially viable method for detecting a larger population of pulsars which are not observable electromagnetically and that future GW observatories have the possibility to greatly expand this capability.

12 pages, 16 figures; accepted for publication in Physical Review D

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• The Science of the Einstein Telescope
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• High priority targets for transient gravitational waves from glitching pulsars
• Quasi-normal f-modes of anisotropic quark stars in full general relativity
• Constraints on gravitational waves from the 2024 Vela pulsar glitch
• Methods for Estimating Neutron Star Parameters using Multiple Mechanisms for Gravitational Wave Emission Associated with Pulsar Glitches
• $f$-mode Oscillations for Hyperons and H-dibaryons in Neutron Stars