Pulsar glitches from quantum vortex networks

Abstract

Abstract Neutron stars or pulsars are very rapidly rotating compact stars with extremely high density. One of the unsolved long-standing problems of these enigmatic celestial bodies is the origin of pulsars’ glitches, i.e., the sudden rapid deceleration in the rotation speed of neutron stars. Although many glitch events have been reported, there is no consensus on the microscopic mechanism responsible for them. One of the important characterizations of the glitches is the scaling law $$P(E) \sim E^{-\alpha }$$ P ( E ) ∼ E - α of the probability distribution for a glitch with energy E. Here, we reanalyse the accumulated up-to-date observation data to obtain the exponent $$\alpha \approx 0.88$$ α ≈ 0.88 for the scaling law, and propose a simple microscopic model that naturally deduces this scaling law without any free parameters. Our model explains the appearance of these glitches in terms of the presence of quantum vortex networks arising at the interface of two different kinds of superfluids in the core of neutron stars; a p-wave neutron superfluid in the inner core which interfaces with the s-wave neutron superfluid in the outer core, where each integer vortex in the s-wave superfluid connects to two half-quantized vortices in the p-wave superfluid through structures called “boojums”.