Thermal emission from low-field neutron stars
Astrophysics
2009-11-07 v2
Abstract
We present a new grid of LTE model atmospheres for weakly magnetic (B<=10e10G) neutron stars, using opacity and equation of state data from the OPAL project and employing a fully frequency- and angle-dependent radiation transfer. We discuss the differences from earlier models, including a comparison with a detailed NLTE calculation. We suggest heating of the outer layers of the neutron star atmosphere as an explanation for the featureless X-ray spectra of RX J1856.5-3754 and RX J0720.4-3125 recently observed with Chandra and XMM.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0110130,
title = {Thermal emission from low-field neutron stars},
author = {B. T. Gaensicke and T. M. Braje and R. W. Romani},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0110130},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
8 pages A&A(5)-Latex, 6 Figures, A&A in press. The model spectra presented here are available as XSPEC tables at http://www.astro.soton.ac.uk/~btg/outgoing/nsspec/