Decoupling of superfluid and normal modes in pulsating neutron stars

We show that equations governing pulsations of superfluid neutron stars can be split into two sets of weakly coupled equations, one describing the superfluid modes and another one, the normal modes. The coupling parameter s is small, |s| similar to 0.01-0.05, for realistic equations of state. Already an approximation s = 0 is sufficient to calculate the pulsation spectrum within the accuracy of a few percent. Our results indicate, in particular, that emission of gravitational waves from superfluid pulsation modes is suppressed in comparison to that from normal modes. The proposed approach allows to drastically simplify modeling of pulsations of superfluid neutron stars.