Vortex unpinning due to crustquake-initiated neutron excitation and pulsar glitches

ABSTRACT Pulsars undergoing crustquake release strain energy, which can be absorbed in a small region inside the inner crust of the star and excite the free superfluid neutrons therein. The scattering of these neutrons with the surrounding pinned vortices may unpin a large number of vortices and effectively reduce the pinning force on vortex lines. Such unpinning by neutron scattering can produce glitches for Crab-like pulsars and Vela pulsar of size in the range of ∼10−8–10−7 and ∼10−9–10−8, respectively. Although we discuss here the crustquake-initiated excitation, the proposal is very generic and equally applicable for any other sources, which can excite the free superfluid neutrons, or can be responsible for superfluid – normal phase transition of neutron superfluid in the inner crust of a pulsar.

A NEW MEASUREMENT OF BEAM ASYMMETRY IN PION PHOTOPRODUCTION FROM THE NEUTRON USING CLAS

We present a preliminary analysis of the photon beam asymmetry observable (Σ) from the photoproduction reaction channel γn → π-p. This new data was obtained using the near-4π CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS) at Jefferson Laboratory, USA, employing a linearly polarised photon beam with an energy range 1.1 - 2.3 GeV. The measurement will provide new data to address the poorly established neutron excitation spectrum and will greatly expand the sparse world data-set both in energy and angle.