Neutron starquakes and pulsar speedup

✍ Scribed by Gordon Baym; David Pines

• Book ID: 102986757
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1971
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 1016 KB
• Volume: 66
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-4916
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-4916(71)90084-4

✦ Synopsis

We give here a simple model of pulsar speedup due to starquakes that enables one to predict the time to the next starquake from the magnitude of the prior one. The parameters of the theory are estimated for recent models of neutron stars. The starquake explanation of speedup leads one to conclude that the Crab pulsar is a fairly light neutron star and the pulsar in Vela lighter still. The energy release in starquakes is discussed, and it is estimated that the Crab pulsar released at best 7 x 1040 ergs in its quake of September, 1969. The geometry of starquakes is considered for the simple model of a self-gravitating elastic incompressible sphere, and we conclude with a brief discussion of plastic flow in neutron star crusts.