Revisiting the post-glitch relaxation of the 2000 Vela glitch with the neutron star equation of states in the Brueckner and relativistic Brueckner theories

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the post-glitch relaxation of the 2000 Vela pulsar glitch using advanced neutron star equations of state, revealing constraints on the pulsar's mass and the nuclear matter properties needed to explain the observations.

Contribution

It introduces the use of microscopic Brueckner and relativistic Brueckner theories for neutron star equations of state to model pulsar glitch relaxation, providing new insights into neutron star structure.

Findings

Vela pulsar's mass must be small to fit glitch data

A stiff equation of state with larger radii is favored

Suppression of pairing gaps in nuclear medium is implied

Abstract

We revisit the short-term post-glitch relaxation of the Vela 2000 glitch in the simple two-component model of pulsar glitch by making use of the latest realistic equations of states from the microscopic Brueckner and the relativistic Brueckner theories for neutron stars, which can reconcile with the available astrophysical constraints. We show that to fit both the glitch size and the post-glitch jumps in frequency derivatives approximately one minute after the glitch, the mass of the Vela pulsar is necessarily small, and there may be demands for a stiff equation of state (which results in a typical stellar radius larger than $\sim\negthickspace12.5\,\rm km$) and a strong suppression of the pairing gap in the nuclear medium. We discuss the implications of this result on the understanding of pulsar glitches.