Jetted GRBs, Afterglows and SGRs from the Birth of Quark Stars

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that when cold nuclear matter is compressed to high nuclear densities, diquarks with spin zero and antisymmetric color wave function Bose condensate into a superfluid/superconducting state that is several times as dense. Various astrophysical phenomena may be explained by gravitational collapse of neutron stars (NSs) to (di)quark stars (QSs) as a result of a first order phase transition in NSs within $\sim 10^{4}$ years after their birth in supernova explosions, when they cooled and spun down sufficiently (by magnetic braking ?). The gravitational energy release drives an explosion which may eject both highly relativistic narrowly collimated jets and a mildly relativistic ``spherical'' shell. The slow contraction/cooling of the remnant QSs can power soft gamma ray repeaters (SGRs) and anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs), without invoking a huge magnetic energy storage. The jets can produce the observed gamma ray bursts (GRBs) in distant galaxies when they happen to point in our direction and the GRBs afterglows. Also the expanding shell from the explosion may produce a GRB afterglow. The jets distort the original SNR, sweep up ambient matter along their trajectories, accelerate it to cosmic ray (CR) energies and disperse it in hot spots which they form when they stop in the galactic halo. Such events in our Galaxy may be the main source of Galactic cosmic rays at all energies.