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Neutron stars

A taste of pasta?

Nature Physics volume 9, pages 396–397 (2013)Cite this article

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Comparing quantitative calculations of the magnetic field decay of neutron stars and their corresponding spin evolution with observations suggests a high degree of disorder in the inner crust, which might provide evidence for nuclear 'pasta'.

Pulsars — one observational manifestation of neutron stars, the ultra-dense remnants of certain supernova explosions — emit a beam of electromagnetic radiation along their magnetic axes. If the beam sweeps across the point of view as seen from the Earth, we observe a pulse of radiation; this enables the highly accurate measurement of the star's spin period and any changes thereof. Pulsars are thought to spin rapidly at birth, on average much more than once per second. They subsequently spin down because of the torque exerted on them by their colossal magnetic fields. But observations of young to middle-aged (thousand- to million-year-old) X-ray pulsars, with periods of up to about 10 s and relatively high surface magnetic fields (1013 G and above), pose a problem. Such pulsars should spin down rapidly to periods of up to 100 s, still detectable in the X-ray band, on timescales of around 10,000 years. But we see no such population of middle-aged, long-period pulsars with high magnetic fields: where are they?

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Figure 1: Neutron star structure.

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  1. William G. Newton is in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University-Commerce, Commerce, Texas 75429-3011, USA,

    William G. Newton

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  1. William G. Newton
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Correspondence to William G. Newton.

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Newton, W. A taste of pasta?. Nature Phys 9, 396–397 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2663

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