English

Settling accretion on to isolated neutron stars from interstellar medium

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2015-06-23 v1

Abstract

We apply the model of subsonic settling accretion on to isolated neutron stars accreting from the interstellar medium (AINS). We show that in this regime the expected mean X-ray luminosity from AINS turns out to be 2-3 orders of magnitude as small as the maximum possible Bondi value, i.e. 1027102810^{27}-10^{28}~erg s1^{-1}. The intrinsically unstable character of settling accretion due to long plasma cooling time leads to regular appearance of X-ray flares with a duration of about one hour and a maximum luminosity of about the Bondi value, 1031\sim10^{31}~erg~s1^{-1}. This feature can be used to distinguished AINS from other dim X-ray sources. With the sensitivity of the forthcoming all-sky X-ray surveys the expected number of the potentially detectable AINS can be from a few to ten.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1412.4066,
  title  = {Settling accretion on to isolated neutron stars from interstellar medium},
  author = {S. B. Popov and K. A. Postnov and N. I. Shakura},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1412.4066},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

5 pages, accepted to MNRAS