English

Spherical Accretion onto Neutron Stars Revisited: Are Hot Solutions Possible ?

Astrophysics 2009-10-22 v1

Abstract

Stationary, spherical accretion onto an unmagnetized neutron star is here reconsidered on the wake of the seminal paper by Zel'dovich \& Shakura (1969). It is found that new ``hot'' solutions may exist for a wide range of luminosities. These solutions are characterized by a high temperature, 109÷101110^{9}\div 10^{11} K, and arise from a stationary equilibrium model where the dominant radiative mechanisms are multiple Compton scattering and bremsstrahlung emission. For low luminosities, \mincir102 LE\mincir 10^{-2} \ L_{E}, only the ``cold'' (\`a la Zel'dovich and Shakura) solution is present.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9402051,
  title  = {Spherical Accretion onto Neutron Stars Revisited: Are Hot Solutions Possible ?},
  author = {Roberto Turolla and Luca Zampieri and Monica Colpi and Aldo Treves},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9402051},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

11 pages (3 postscript files figures available on request), PlainTeX, Ref. SISSA 21/94/A