Evidence for False Vacuum States inside the Cores of Massive Pulsars and the Ramification on the Measurements of Their True Masses

Abstract

Based on the theory and observations of glitching pulsars, we show that the ultra-cold supranuclear dense matter inside the cores of massive pulsars should condensate in vacua, as predicated by non-perturbative QCD. The trapped matter here forms false vacuums embedded in flat spacetimes and completely disconnected from the outside world. Although the vacuum expectation value here vanishes, the masses and sizes of these incompressible superfluid cores are set to grow with cosmic times, in accord with the Onsager-Feynman superfluidity analysis. We apply our scenario to several well-studied pulsars, namely the Crab, Vela, PSR J0740+6620 and find that the trapped mass-contents in their cores read {0.15,0.55,0.64} , implying that their true masses are {1.55,2.35,2.72} , respectively. Based thereon, we conclude that: 1) The true masses of massive pulsars and neutron stars are much higher than detected by direct observations and, therefore, are unbounded from above, 2) The remnant of the merger event in GW170817 should be a massive NS harbouring a core with 1.66 .