English

NSMAXG: A new magnetic neutron star spectral model in XSPEC

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2014-08-08 v1 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

The excellent sensitivity of X-ray telescopes, such as Chandra and XMM-Newton, is ideal for the study of cooling neutron stars, which can emit at these energies. In order to exploit the wealth of information contained in the high quality data, a thorough knowledge of the radiative properties of neutron star atmospheres is necessary. A key factor affecting photon emission is magnetic fields, and neutron stars are known to have strong surface magnetic fields. Here I briefly describe our latest work on constructing magnetic (B >= 10^10 G) atmosphere models of neutron stars and the NSMAXG implementation of these models in XSPEC. Our results allow for more robust extractions of neutron star parameters from observations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1311.5583,
  title  = {NSMAXG: A new magnetic neutron star spectral model in XSPEC},
  author = {Wynn C. G. Ho},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1311.5583},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

Proceedings of IAUS 302 "Magnetic Fields Throughout Stellar Evolution", M. Jardine, P. Petit, & H.C. Spruit (eds.); 4 pages, 2 figures