2014MNRAS.438L..16H

Pulsar glitches are sudden increases in the spin frequency of an otherwise steadily spinning down neutron star. These events are thought to represent a direct probe of the dynamics of the superfluid interior of the star. However glitches can differ significantly from one another, not only in size and frequency, but also in the post-glitch response of the star. Some appear as simple steps in frequency, while others also display an increase in spin-down rate after the glitch. Others still show several exponentially relaxing components in the post-glitch recovery. We show that if glitches are indeed due to large-scale unpinning of superfluid vortices, the different regions in which this occurs and respective time-scales on which they recouple can lead to the various observed signatures. Furthermore, we show that this framework naturally accounts for the peculiar relaxations of glitches in Anomalous X-ray Pulsars.