  Strangeon stars, which are proposed to describe the nature of pulsar-like
compact stars, have passed various observational tests. The maximum mass of a
non-rotating strangeon star could be high, which implies that the remnants of
binary strangeon star mergers could even be long-lived massive strangeon stars.
We study rigidly rotating strangeon stars in the slowly rotating approximation,
using the Lennard-Jones model for the equation of state. Rotation can
significantly increase the maximum mass of strangeon stars with unchanged
baryon numbers, enlarging the mass-range of long-lived strangeon stars. During
spin-down after merger, the decrease of radius of the remnant will lead to the
release of gravitational energy. Taking into account the efficiency of
converting the gravitational energy luminosity to the observed X-ray
luminosity, we find that the gravitational energy could provide an alternative
energy source for the plateau emission of X-ray afterglow. The fitting results
of X-ray plateau emission of some short gamma-ray bursts suggest that the
magnetic dipole field strength of the remnants can be much smaller than that of
expected when the plateau emission is powered only by spin-down luminosity of
magnetars.
