Nonanalytic Relativistic r-Modes of Slowly Rotating Nonbarotropic Neutron Stars

Abstract

We show that the r-modes of slowly rotating nonbarotropic neutron stars are described by nonanalytic functions of stellar angular velocity, which makes the perturbation techniques, used so far in the r-mode theoretical studies, inapplicable. In contrast to those studies and in accordance with numerical calculations beyond the slow rotation approximation, the obtained r-mode spectrum is discrete, which resolves the continuous spectrum problem, lasting since 1997. Our findings imply that the relativistic r-modes in slowly rotating neutron stars dramatically differ from their Newtonian cousins, which may have important implications for the detectability of r-mode signatures in observations, in particular for the r-mode excitation efficiency during the neutron star inspirals.