Brightness constraint for cooling models of young neutron stars

We study the systematics of neutron star cooling curves with three representative masses from the most populated interval of the estimated mass distribution for compact objects. The cooling simulations are made in the framework of the nuclear medium cooling (NMC) scenario using different combinations of possible nucleon-nucleon pairing gaps. Possible heating or enhanced cooling mechanisms in the crust are not considered. We define a constraint on the highest possible temperatures for a given age of young neutron stars and show that this limits the freedom of modeling pairing gaps and crust properties.