Close-in Exoplanets as Candidates of Strange Quark Matter Objects

TL;DR

This paper explores the possibility that certain close-in exoplanets, especially around pulsars and white dwarfs, could be made of strange quark matter, and discusses their potential detectability via gravitational waves.

Contribution

It identifies candidate SQM planets among known close-in exoplanets and proposes gravitational wave detection as a method to test the SQM hypothesis.

Findings

Four pulsar planets meet the orbital period criteria for SQM candidates.

Two additional planets are potential SQM candidates based on their periods.

Several white dwarf planets have periods suggesting they could be SQM objects.

Abstract

Since the true ground state of the hadrons may be strange quark matter (SQM), pulsars may actually be strange stars rather than neutron stars. According to this SQM hypothesis, strange planets can also stably exist. The density of normal matter planets can hardly be higher than 30 g cm$^{-3}$. As a result, they will be tidally disrupted when its orbital radius is less than $\sim 5.6\times10^{10} \rm \, cm $, or when the orbital period ($P_{\rm orb}$) is less than $ \sim \rm 6100\, s $. On the contrary, a strange planet can safely survive even when it is very close to the host, due to its high density. The feature can help us identify SQM objects. In this study, we have tried to search for SQM objects among close-in exoplanets orbiting around pulsars. Encouragingly, it is found that four pulsar planets (XTE J1807-294 b, XTE J1751-305 b, PSR 0636 b, PSR J1807-2459A b) completely meet the criteria of $P_{\rm orb} < \rm 6100\, s $, and are thus good candidates for SQM planets. The orbital periods of two other planets (PSR J1719+14 b and PSR J2051-0827 b) are only slightly higher than the criteria. They could be regarded as potential candidates. Additionally, we find that the periods of five white dwarf planets (GP Com b, V396 Hya b, J1433 b, WD 0137-349 b, and SDSS J1411+2009 b) are less than 0.1 days. We argue that they might also be SQM planets. It is further found that the persistent gravitational wave emissions from at least three of these close-in planetary systems are detectable to LISA. More encouragingly, the advanced LIGO and Einstein Telescope are able to detect the gravitational wave bursts produced by the merger events of such SQM planetary systems, which will provide a unique test for the SQM hypothesis.