FAST PULSARS, STRANGE STARS: AN OPPORTUNITY IN RADIO ASTRONOMY

Abstract

The world's data on radio pulsars are not expected to represent the underlying pulsar population because of a search bias against detection of short periods, especially below 1 ms. Yet pulsars in increasing numbers with periods right down to this limit have been discovered, suggesting that there may be even shorter ones. If pulsars with periods below 1/2 ms were found, the conclusion that the confined hadronic phase of nucleons and nuclei is only metastable would be almost inescapable. The plausible ground state in that event is the deconfined phase of (3-flavor) strange-quark-matter. From the QCD energy scale this is as likely a ground state as the confined phase. We show that strange matter as the ground state is not ruled out by any known fact, and most especially not by the fact that the universe is in the confined phase.