Magnetic fields in axisymmetric neutron stars
Abstract
We derive general equations for axisymmetric Newtonian MHD and use these as the basis of a code for calculating equilibrium configurations of rotating magnetised neutron stars in a stationary state. We investigate the field configurations that result from our formalism, which include purely poloidal, purely toroidal and mixed fields. For the mixed-field formalism the toroidal component appears to be bounded at less than 7%. We calculate distortions induced both by magnetic fields and by rotation. From our non-linear work we are able to look at the realm of validity of perturbative work: we find for our results that perturbative-regime formulae for magnetic distortions agree to within 10% of the nonlinear results if the ellipticity is less than 0.15 or the average field strength is less than G. We also consider how magnetised equilibrium structures vary for different polytropic indices.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0903.0827,
title = {Magnetic fields in axisymmetric neutron stars},
author = {S. K. Lander and D. I. Jones},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0903.0827},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
19 pages, 11 figures; typos removed, one paragraph of Discussion rewritten