Accreting isolated neutron stars
Abstract
Accretion of interstellar material by a magnetized, slowly rotating isolated neutron star is discussed. We show that the average persistent X-ray luminosity of these objects is unlikely to exceed 4x10^26 erg/s. They can also appear as X-ray bursters with the burst duration of ~30 minutes and repetition time of \~10^5 yr. This indicates that the number of the accreting isolated neutron stars which could be observed with recent X-ray missions is a few orders of magnitude smaller than that previously estimated. Our findings argue against models in which the magnetic field of neutron stars is assumed to decay exponentially on a time scale shorter than 500 Myr.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0612685,
title = {Accreting isolated neutron stars},
author = {N. R. Ikhsanov and P. L. Biermann},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0612685},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
Proceedings of the 363. WE-Heraeus Seminar on: Neutron Stars and Pulsars (Posters and contributed talks) Physikzentrum Bad Honnef, Germany, May.14-19, 2006, eds. W.Becker, H.H.Huang, MPE Report 291, pp.165-168