Quantum Vacuum Friction

Dupays et al. have argued in many papers that the magnetization of the vacuum surrounding a neutron star and cause it to spin down more quickly than magnetic dipole emission especially for long spin periods.  The gist of this paper is to argue that the objects that we inferred are magnetars from their values of P and P-dot are actually older analogues to regular radio pulsars but with longer periods of QVF dominates the spin down.   It is a cute argument but it does not address the strange behaviour of the objects that we call magnetars.  This behaviour provides additional support for the magnetar model because the strong B-fields can account for it.   The whole quantum vacuum friction idea seems a bit dodgy too, but I cannot succinctly  explain what is wrong with it.


http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.0597 Quantum Vacuum influence on the evolution of Pulsars