Are Pulsars Bare Strange Stars?

It is believed that pulsars are neutron stars or strange stars with crusts. However we suggest here that pulsars may be bare strange stars (i.e., strange stars without crust). Due to rapid rotation and strong emission, young strange stars produced in supernova explosions should be bare when they act as radio pulsars. Because of strong magnetic field, two polar-crusts would shield the polar caps of an accreting strange star. Such a suggestion can be checked by further observations. Two greatest theories (i.e., gravity and quantum) developed in this century resulted in the formation of the theory of compact stars. One of such kind of stars observed are pulsars that were discovered by radio astronomers in 1960s. More observations later in X-ray and γ-ray bands confirmed the existence of pulsars in the nature: a kind of celestial bodies with masses ∼ 1M , radius ∼ 10 km, and magnetic fields ∼ 10 gausses. Such objects, named as pulsars, are popularly thought to be neutron stars soon after the discoveries. Owing to the development of the hadronic quark model in 1960s and 1970s, it is conjectured that strange quark matter (SQM), composed of nearly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks, may be an absolutely stable ‘hadron’ of strong interaction confined states. If this assumption is true, strange star is in the nature, which should be a ground state of neutron star. Hence, radio pulsars survived from supernovae might be strange stars. It is addressed that a strange quark core is surrounded by a normal matter crust in the conventional strange star scenario for radio pulsar. However, bare strange stars (BSS) can also well act as radio pulsars. If pulsars are BSSs, 1, some problems in pulsar emission mechanism can be settled, 2, strange stars and neutron stars could easily be distinguished in observation. Pulsars produced after supernovae: bare strange stars? The process of phase transition from neutron matter to SQM can cure the imperfection in the core-collapse supernova paradigm. For progenitors with negligible effect of rotation, additional neutrino emission by forming a strange star can sufficiently enhance the power of neutrino energy deposition behind the stalled shock, thus conduce towards a successful explosion and its enough energy. For progenitors with rapidly rotating inner core, neutron stars might be formed as semifinished products after supernovae. Such a neutron star may be finally phase-converted to a strange star when it spins down, and a γ-ray burst may appear simultaneously. There are two reasons for us to inevitably suggest that a strange star as a radio pulsar should be bare. First, the mass ejection rate from an envelope of a strange star is very high soon after a supernova, therefore it is natural to expect that the quark surface of a very young strange star is nearly (or completely) bare. The second one is the rapid rotation of newborn strange star. Only when the rotation of a strange star is slowed down enough, would the accretion onto the surface be possible. The conditions for a possible accretion are rm < rc < rl. Substituting the radius of magnetosphere rm, the co-rotation radius rc, and the radius of light cylinder rl, we find P1 > 0.7 . M −3/7 8 for typical pulsar values, where . M8 is accretion rate in 10−8M · yr−1. For solitary strange stars, . M8 is very small because of very strong ejection around the star. If . M8= 0.01, only strange stars with periods greater than 5s can accrete surrounding matter.