McGill.CA / Science / Department of Physics

Informal Pizza Seminar

Photon Radiation from Bare Quark Stars

Prashanth Jaikumar

McGill

Two very different classes of compact stars, neutron stars and bare quark stars, are proving difficult to distinguish on the basis of their gross physical properties alone. However, their emitted photon spectrum can be significantly different. A bare quark star, in addition to emitting thermal photons at super-Eddington luminosities for extended periods of time, can also emit non-thermal photons from the Bremsstrahlung process e-e-e-e-γ occuring in the electrosphere.

As a result, the bare quark star has a distinctive photon spectrum and temperature evolution, whose predicted characteristics, if observed, would constitute an almost unmistakable detection of a strange quark star and shed light on color superconductivity at stellar densities.

Tuesday, March 16th 2004, 13:00
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, room 326