Effect of r-mode instability on the evolution of isolated strange stars

Abstract

We studied the evolution of isolated strange stars synthetically, considering the influence of {\it r-}mode instability. Our results show that the cooling of strange stars with non-ultra strong magnetic fields is delayed by the heating due to the {\it r-}modes damping during million years, while the spin-down of the stars is dominated by gravitational radiation. Especially for the strange stars in a possible existing color-flavor locked phase, the effect of the {\it r-}mode instability on the evolution of the stars becomes extremely important since the viscosity, the neutrino emissivity, and the specific heat involving paring quarks are blocked. It leads to the cooling of these color superconducting stars is very slow, and the stars can remain high temperature within million years differing completely from previous understanding. In this case, a strange star in color-flavor locked phase can be located at the bottom of its {\it r-}mode instability window for a long time, but does not spin down to a very low frequency within hours.