Magnetic Lensing near Ultramagnetized Neutron Stars
Astrophysics
2009-10-31 v1
Abstract
Extremely strong magnetic fields change the vacuum index of refraction. This induces a lensing effect that is not unlike the lensing phenomenon in strong gravitational fields. The main difference between the two is the polarization dependency of the magnetic lensing, a behaviour that induces a handful of interesting effects. The main prediction is that the thermal emission of neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields is polarized - up to a few percent for the largest fields known. This potentially allows a direct method for measuring their magnetic fields.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9901376,
title = {Magnetic Lensing near Ultramagnetized Neutron Stars},
author = {Nir J. Shaviv and Jeremy S. Heyl and Yoram Lithwick},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9901376},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
To appear in MNRAS, 12 pages, 9 figures