Thermal Featureless Spectrum: Evidence for Bare Strange Stars

Abstract

Motivated by trying to understand the absence of spectral lines in the thermal components of the X-ray compact sources observed recently by Chandra or XMM, we propose that these sources could be simply bare strange stars. The formation, cooling, and thermal photon radiation of bare strange stars have been investigated. It is suggested that thermal featureless spectrum could be a new probe for identifying strange stars.

Comments: 4 pages, revised version to be published in ApJL, or at http://vega.bac.pku.edu.cn/~rxxu/publications/index_P.htm