Strong first-order phase transition in a rotating neutron star core and the associated energy release

TL;DR

This paper investigates the energy release during a strong first-order phase transition in rotating neutron stars, showing that the energy released depends only on the overpressure and not on rotation, using detailed 2-D simulations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the energy release in such phase transitions is independent of stellar rotation, allowing 1-D non-rotating star calculations to predict outcomes for rotating stars.

Findings

Energy release depends only on overpressure, not on rotation.

1-D calculations accurately predict energy release for rotating stars.

Phase transitions could occur in hot, pulsating neutron star cores.

Abstract

We calculate the energy release associated with a strong first-order phase transition, from normal phase N to an "exotic" superdense phase S, in a rotating neutron star. Such a phase transition, accompanied by a density jump rho_N --> rho_S, is characterized by rho_S/rho_N > 3/2(1+P_0/rho_N c^2), where P_0 is the pressure, at which phase transition occurs. Configurations with small S-phase cores are then unstable and collapse into stars with large S-phase cores. The energy release is equal to the difference in mass-energies between the initial (normal) configuration and the final configuration containing an S-phase core, total stellar baryon mass and angular momentum being kept constant. The calculations of the energy release are based on precise numerical 2-D calculations. Polytropic equations of state (EOSs) as well as realistic EOS with strong first-order phase transition due to kaon condensation are used. For polytropic EOSs, a large parameter space is studied. For a fixed "overpressure", dP, defined as the relative excess of central pressure of collapsing metastable star over the pressure of equilibrium first-order phase transition, the energy release E_rel does not depend on the stellar angular momentum. It coincides with that for nonrotating stars with the same dP. Therefore, results of 1-D calculations of E_rel(dP) for non-rotating stars can be used to predict, with very high precision, the outcome of much harder to perform 2-D calculations for rotating stars with the same dP. This result holds also for dP_min < dP < 0, corresponding to phase transitions with climbing over the energy barrier separating metastable N-phase configurations from those with an S-phase core. Such phase transitions could be realized in the cores of newly born, hot, pulsating neutron stars.