Abstract
IF the submillisecond pulsar in the remnant of supernova 1987A really is rotating stably with a period Psmp of 0.508 ms (ref. 1), its existence can be used to rule out nearly all 'realistic' equations of state for dense nuclear matter. (An alternative hypothesis, that the pulsar is vibrating rather than rotating2, yields no such constraints.) We present here a simple equation of state that yields, in the non-rotating case, maximally compact models of neutron stars, and argue that stars constructed in this way will also be stable when rotating with periods <0.5 ms. Additional constraints found by applying the same equation of state to the 'slowly' rotating pulsar PSR1913 + 16, whose mass is accurately known, leaves only a small range of acceptable parameters for neutron star models based on equations of state that obey the causality requirement that their sound speeds are less than the speed of light.
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Haensel, P., Zdunik, J. A submillisecond pulsar and the equation of state of dense matter. Nature 340, 617–619 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1038/340617a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/340617a0
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