Related papers: Neutron Star Cooling
Neutron stars are the densest objects known in our visible universe. Properties of matter inside a neutron star are encoded in its equation of state, which has wide-ranging uncertainty from a theoretical perspective. With the current…
The study of how neutron stars cool over time can provide invaluable insights into fundamental physics such as the nuclear equation of state and superconductivity and superfluidity. A critical relation in neutron star cooling is the one…
Transitions of nuclear compositions in the crust of a neutron star induced by stellar spin-down are evaluated at zero temperature. We construct a compressible liquid-drop model for the energy of nuclei immersed in a neutron gas, including…
A number of properties of dense matter can be understood semiquantitatively in terms of simple physical arguments. We begin with the outer parts of neutron stars, and consider the density at which pressure ionization occurs, the density at…
The thermal evolution of neutron stars is coupled to their spin down and the resulting changes in structure and chemical composition. This coupling correlates stellar surface temperatures with rotational state as well as time. We report an…
As a neutron star spins down, the nuclear matter continuously is converted into quark matter due to the core density increase and then latent heat is released. We have investigated the thermal evolution of neutron stars undergoing such…
We model neutron star cooling, in particular the current rapid cooldown of the neutron star Cas A, with a microscopic nuclear equation of state featuring strong direct Urca processes and using compatible nuclear pairing gaps as well as…
Transiently accreting Low Mass X-Ray Binaries have the potential to probe the core composition of their neutron stars via deep crustal heating caused by nuclear reactions. We statistically assess this deep crustal heating scenario, taking…
In these lecture notes I briefly discuss the present day situation and new discoveries in astrophysics of neutron stars focusing on isolated objects. The latter include soft gamma repeaters, anomalous X-ray pulsars, central compact objects…
We present recent work on using astronomical observations of neutron stars to reveal unique insights into nuclear matter that cannot be obtained from laboratories on Earth. First, we discuss our measurement of the rapid cooling of the…
We review the observational properties of transient systems made by a neutron star primary and a late dwarf companion (known also as Soft X-ray Transients) during their quiescent state. We focus on the several emission mechanisms proposed…
Thermal evolution of neutron stars is studied in the $f(R)=R+\alpha R^{2}$ theory of gravity. We first describe the equations of stellar structure and evolution for a spherically symmetric spacetime plus a perfect fluid at rest. We then…
We study the effects of heat blanketing envelopes of neutron stars on their cooling. To this aim, we perform cooling simulations using newly constructed models of the envelopes composed of binary ion mixtures (H--He, He--C, C--Fe) varying…
We study the kinetic cooling (heating) of old neutron stars due to coherent scattering with relic neutrinos (sterile neutrino dark matter) via Standard Model neutral-current interactions. We take into account several important physical…
We discuss pycnonuclear burning of highly exotic atomic nuclei in deep crusts of neutron stars, at densities up to 1e13 g/cc. As an application, we consider pycnonuclear burning of matter accreted on a neutron star in a soft X-ray transient…
Cooling simulations of neutron stars and their comparison with the data from thermally emitting x-ray sources put constraints on the properties of axions, and by extension of any light pseudoscalar dark matter particles, whose existence has…
The cooling theory of neutron stars is corroborated by its comparison with observations of thermally emitting isolated neutron stars and accreting neutron stars in binary systems. An important ingredient for such an analysis is the age of…
We introduce a new tool for 'unmasking' the composition of neutron star (NS) interiors which is based on the fact that the state of matter at high densities determines the statistics of both NS observables, the temperature-age (TA) data as…
Neutron stars contain matter in one of the densest forms found in the Universe. This feature, together with the unprecedented progress in observational astrophysics, makes such stars superb astrophysical laboratories for a broad range of…
We show that convection driven by chemical separation can significantly affect the cooling curves of accreting neutron stars after they go into quiescence. We calculate the thermal relaxation of the neutron star ocean and crust including…