Starquake Model in a Solid Quark Star

The author demonstrates that how to understand the Glitches of solid pulsars in the starquake model. Glitch is the sudden spin-up during the normal spin-down process, which has been observed in many pulsars. The mechanism of Glitches is still a matter of debate because it depends on the unsolved problem that what is the nature of pulsars. One of the models of pulsars, the so-called solid quark-cluster stars, could not be ruled out by neither the astrophysics observations nor theoretical considerations. The Glitches of solid quarkcluster stars could naturally be the result of starqukes. During the spinning-down of the solid star, the strain energy develops until the stress reaches the critical value, then some parts of the star fragment, which would suddenly decrease the moment of inertia of the star, leading to the sudden increase of the rotation frequency that manifests as a Glitch. If the star has high mass or rotates slowly, the shrink of radius would happen during the starquake, leading to a huge amount of energy releasing which accounts for AXPs/SGRs. On the other hand, if the star rotates fast, only the oblateness of the star changes during the starquake, which would lead to negligible releasing of energy. This paper discusses the phenomenon of Glitches for solid quark-cluster stars, including the physical processes and consequences of starquakes, as well as the reasons for different energy releasing during Glitches. Further theoretical study combined with more observations about Glitches would be helpful for us to test the conjecture of sold quark-clusters.