Effects of Superfluidity on Spheroidal Oscillations of Neutron Stars

In the limit of short wavelengths, it has been shown that superfluidity significantly affects wave propagation in neutron stars. Here we abandon the short-wavelength restriction and extend these calculations to global oscillation modes. In the present analysis, the solid crust of the neutron star is divided into an outer crust and an inner crust, and a superfluid of neutrons coexists with the solid lattice in the inner crust. We have computed several low-order global spheroidal modes for l = 2 both with and without superfluidity. We find that superfluidity in the inner crust affects the frequency spectra of acoustic (p-) modes, shear (s-) modes, and interfacial (i-) modes, although the surface gravity (g-) modes are not affected at all.

Oscillations of Rotating Neutron Stars

We use a perturbation technique to compute the rotational corrections to the non-radial oscillation spectrum of a realistic neutron-star model. We compute, to first order in the rotation rate, the corrections to the normal mode eigenfrequencies and eigenfunctions. We find that l = l0 oscillations are coupled to l = l0 ± 1 oscillations by the Coriolis force. For the toroidal modes, this coupling introduces a non-zero radial component to the velocity field. We have used this result to compute the neutrino damping rates for several corrected toroidal modes. This damping mechanism is inoperative for toroidal modes in a non-rotating star because these modes produce no density nor temperature perturbations. The neutrino damping time can approach the gravitational radiation damping time in rotating neutron stars if the central temperature is high enough, (Tc ≥ 108 K). The rotationally induced coupling of spheroidal oscillations to toroidal modes can also produce significant displacements at the stellar surface. This may have interesting implications for channeling energy, e.g., that associated with a glitch, to the surface of the star. Perhaps this might produce observable effects in the pulsar emission process or a γ-ray burst event.