Interferometric detectors will very soon give us an unprecedented view of the gravitational-wave sky, and in particular of the explosive and transient Universe. Now is the time to challenge our theoretical understanding of short-duration gravitationa
l-wave signatures from cataclysmic events, their connection to more traditional electromagnetic and particle astrophysics, and the data analysis techniques that will make the observations a reality. This paper summarizes the state of the art, future science opportunities, and current challenges in understanding gravitational-wave transients.
We present recent work on using astronomical observations of neutron stars to reveal unique insights into nuclear matter that cannot be obtained from laboratories on Earth. First, we discuss our measurement of the rapid cooling of the youngest neutro
n star in the Galaxy; this provides the first direct evidence for superfluidity and superconductivity in the supra-nuclear core of neutron stars. We show that observations of thermonuclear X-ray bursts on neutron stars can be used to constrain properties of neutron superfluidity and neutrino emission. We describe the implications of rapid neutron star rotation rates on aspects of nuclear and superfluid physics. Finally, we show that entrainment coupling between the neutron superfluid and the nuclear lattice leads to a less mobile crust superfluid; this result puts into question the conventional picture of pulsar glitches as being solely due to the crust superfluid and suggests that the core superfluid also participates.
Traditionally, the subject of hydromagnetic equilibrium in neutron stars has been addressed in the context of standard magnetohydrodynamics, with matter obeying a barotropic equation of state. In this paper we take a step towards a more realistic tre
atment of the problem by considering neutron stars with interior superfluid components. In this multifluid model stratification associated with a varying matter composition (the relative proton to neutron density fraction) enters as a natural ingredient, leading to a non-barotropic system. After formulating the hydromagnetic equilibrium of superfluid/superconducting neutron stars as a perturbation problem, we focus on the particular case of a three-fluid system consisting of superfluid neutrons and normal protons and electrons. We determine the equilibrium structure of dipolar magnetic fields with a mixed poloidal-toroidal composition. We find that, with respect to barotropic models, stratification has the generic effect of leading to equilibria with a higher fraction of magnetic energy stored in the toroidal component. However, even in models with strong stratification the poloidal and toroidal components are comparable, with the former contributing the bulk of the magnetic energy.
We consider the pinning of superfluid (neutron) vortices to magnetic fluxtubes associated with a type II (proton) superconductor in neutron star cores. We demonstrate that core pinning affects the spin-down of the system significantly, and discuss im
plications for regular radio pulsars and magnetars. We find that magnetars are likely to be in the pinning regime, while most radio pulsars are not. This suggests that the currently inferred magnetic field for magnetars may be overestimated. We also obtain a new timescale for the magnetic field evolution which could be associated with the observed activity in magnetars, provided that the field has a strong toroidal component.
