Towards a holographic description of pulsar glitch mechanism

Misra, Anuj

Towards a holographic description of pulsar glitch mechanism

Master Thesis

2015

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics

Faculty

Faculty of Science

Abstract

This work aims to review the progress in understanding the underlining physics of pulsar glitches: beginning from the pedagogical development of the subject to eventually motivating the use of AdS/CFT techniques in studying a certain class of condensed matter systems. The foundation of this work is built upon the Gross Pitaevskii (GP) model of super-fluidity applied to the interior matter of neutron stars, where the condensate wave function acts as the order parameter of the macroscopic coherence theory. The excitation modes of the field equations are found to be solitonic vortices, which then go on to present a theoretical basis to the plausible theories of pulsar glitches involving vortex dynamics. The second major thrust of this thesis is in reviewing the application of AdS/CFT in study of strongly-coupled condensed matter systems, with special attention to the models of holographic superfluidity that admit vortex-like solutions. The basic identification of the characteristic free energy configuration of global vortices in the AdS/CFT prescription enables to motivate its use in studying the pulsar glitch mechanism. The last part of this work traces the conclusions of this review and attempts to present the current state-of-progress of the field with its extensive domain of purview and open lines of inquiry.

Keywords

Astrophysics and Space Science

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