Low-mass normal-matter atmospheres of strange stars and their radiation

Abstract

The quark surface of a strange star has a very low emissivity for X-ray photons. I find that a small amount of normal matter at the quark surface with temperature in the range $10^7\la T_{_S}} \ll mc^2/k\simeq 6\times 10^9$ K is enough to produce X-rays with high luminosity, $L_X\simeq 10^{32}-10^{34}(\Delta M/10^{-22}{M}_{\odot }{)}^{2}erg{s}^{-1}$. For the total atmosphere mass $\Delta M\sim (10^{-20}-10^{-19})M_{\odot }$, this luminosity may be as high as the Eddington limit. The mean energy of X-ray photons which are radiated from such a low-mass atmosphere of a strange star is $\sim 10^2(T_S/10^{8}K{)}^{0.45}\simeq 30-300$ times larger than the mean energy of X-ray photons which are radiated from the surface of both a neutron star and a strange star with a massive normal-matter envelope, $\Delta M\sim 10^{-5}{M}_{\odot }$, for a fixed temperature at the stellar core. This raises the possibility that some black hole candidates with hard X-ray spectra are, in fact, such strange stars with a low-mass atmosphere. The X-ray emission from single strange stars is estimated.

Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, AAS LATEX macroc v4.0, 9 pages

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• Thermal emission from bare quark matter surfaces of hot strange stars
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• Modelling of surface magnetic field in neutron stars: application to radio pulsars
• What if pulsars are born as strange stars?
• On the formation of inner vacuum gaps in radio pulsars
• Fall-back crust around a quark-nova compact remnant I: The degenerate shell case with applications to SGRs, AXPs and XDINs
• The optical/UV excess of X-ray dim isolated neutron star: I. bremsstrahlung emission from a strangeon star plasma atmosphere
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• Fast Radio Bursts from the collapse of Strange Star Crusts
• Strangelet dwarfs
• Radiation from hot bare strange stars
• Planets orbiting Quark Nova compact remnants
• Pair emission from bare magnetized strange stars
• Thermal Relaxation and Cooling of Quark Stars with a Strangelet Crust
• Stability of strange stars (SS) derived from a realistic equation of state
• Millimeter-wave Signature of Strange Matter Stars
• Axion-Polaritons in quark stars: a possible solution to the missing pulsar problem
• Strange stars in low-mass binary pulsar systems
• Cooling of Quark Stars in the Color Superconductive Phase: Effect of Photons from Glueball decay
• Pair luminosity and cooling of newborn strange star: unpaired quarks