Are soft γ-ray repeaters strange stars?

The soft γ-ray repeaters (SGRs) are proposed to result from young, magnetized strange stars with superconducting cores. As such a strange star spins down, the quantized vortex lines move outward and drag the magnetic flux tubes because of the strong coupling between them. Since the terminations of the tubes interact with the stellar crust, the dragged tubes can produce sufficient tension to crack the crust and pull parts of the broken platelet into the quark core. The deconfinement of crustal matter into strange quark matter will release energy. The model burst energy, duration, time interval, spectrum, and the persistent x-ray emission from SGRs are shown to be in agreement with observed results.published_or_final_versio