Quark-nova remnants III:Application to RRATs

TL;DR

This paper models the late evolution of quark-nova remnants, proposing a transition from degenerate torus to non-degenerate disk around 1 million years, explaining RRATs' radio burst behavior and activity cycles.

Contribution

It introduces a novel evolutionary model linking quark-nova remnants to RRATs, explaining their radio activity patterns and flux variations.

Findings

The transition from degenerate to non-degenerate disk occurs around 10^6 years post-quark-nova.

The model accounts for RRATs' burst durations and radio flux levels.

It explains the activity cycles and spin-down rate variations observed in RRATs like PSR B1931+24.

Abstract

This is the third paper of a series of papers where we explore the evolution of iron-rich ejecta from quark-novae. In the first paper, we explored the case where a quark-nova ejecta forms a degenerate shell, supported by the star's magnetic field, with applications to SGRs. In the second paper we considered the case where the ejecta would have sufficient angular momentum to form a degenerate Keplerian torus and applied such a system to two AXPs, namely 1E2259 + 586 and 4U0142 + 615. Here we explore the late evolution of the degenerate torus and find that it can remain unchanged for $\sim 10^{6}$ years before it becomes non-degenerate. This transition from a degenerate torus (accretion dominated) to a non-degenerate disk (no accretion), occurs about $10^{6}$ years following the quark-nova, and exhibits features that are reminiscent of observed properties of RRATs. Using this model, we can account for the duration of both the radio bursts and the quiet phase, as well as the observed radio flux from RRATs. The unique on and off activity of the radio pulsar PSR B1931 + 24 is similar to that of "old RRATs" in our model. For old RRATs, in our model, the spin-down rate during the radio loud phase is about a factor 1.6 larger than when it is quiet, remarkably similar to what has been measured for PSR B1931 + 24. We discuss a connection between XDINs and RRATs and argue that some XDINs may be ``dead RRATs'' that have already consumed their non-degenerate disk.