Probing neutron star interiors with pulsar glitches

Abstract

Pulsar glitches are thought to be probes of the superfluid interior of neutron stars. These sudden jumps in frequency observed in many pulsars are generally assumed to be the macroscopic manifestation of superfluid vortex motion on a microscopic scale. Resolving and modelling such phenomena on the scale of a neutron star is, however, a challenging problem which still remains open, fifty years after the discovery of pulsars. In this article I will review recent theoretical progress, both on the microscopic leve…