Related papers: Polarization of Thermal X-rays from Isolated Neutr…
New-generation X-ray polarimeters currently under development promise to open a new window in the study of high-energy astrophysical sources. Among them, neutron stars appear particularly suited for polarization measurements. Radiation from…
The intense magnetic fields of neutron stars naturally lead to strong anisotropy and polarization of radiation emanating from their surfaces, both being sensitive to the hot spot position on the surface. Accordingly, pulse phase-resolved…
In this paper, we systematically calculate the polarization in soft X-rays emitted from magnetized neutron stars, which are expected to be observed by the next-generation X-ray satellites. Magnetars are one of the targets for these…
In the atmospheric plasma of a strongly magnetized neutron star, vacuum polarization can induce a Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein like resonance across which a X-ray photon may (depending on its energy) convert from one mode into the other,…
The observed polarization properties of thermal radiation from isolated, cooling neutron stars depend on both the emission processes at the surface and the effects of the magnetized vacuum which surrounds the star. Here we investigate the…
Polarizability tensor of a strongly magnetized plasma and the polarization vectors and opacities of normal electromagnetic waves are studied for the conditions typical of neutron star atmospheres, taking account of partial ionization…
We review the polarization properties of X-ray emission from highly magnetized neutron stars, focusing on emission from the stellar surfaces. We discuss how x-ray polarization can be used to constrain neutron star magnetic field and…
Isolated Neutron Stars are known to be endowed with extreme magnetic fields, whose maximum intensity ranges from 10^12 to 10^15 G, which permeates their magnetospheres. Their surrounding environment is also strongly magnetised, especially…
Neutron stars provide ideal astrophysical laboratories for probing new physics beyond the Standard Model. If axions exist, photons can develop linear polarization during photon-axion conversion in the magnetic field of a neutron star. We…
We present a theoretical study of radiative transfer in strongly magnetized electron-ion plasmas, focusing on the effect of vacuum polarization due to quantum electrodynamics. This study is directly relevant to thermal radiation from the…
The surfaces of neutron stars are likely sources of strongly polarized soft X rays due to the presence of strong magnetic fields. Scattering transport in the surface layers is critical to the determination of the emergent anisotropy of…
We construct atmosphere models for strongly magnetized neutron stars with surface fields $B\sim 10^{12}-10^{15}$ G and effective temperatures $T_{\rm eff}\sim 10^6-10^7$ K. The atmospheres directly determine the characteristics of thermal…
Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars, that radiate at the expense of their strong magnetic field and their high surface temperature. Five decades of multi-wavelength observations showed a large variety of physical parameters, such as…
In the last few years considerable observational resources have been devoted to study the thermal emission from isolated neutron stars. Detailed XMM and Chandra observations revealed a number of features in the X-ray pulse profile, like…
We construct hydrogen atmosphere models for magnetized neutron stars in radiative equilibrium with surface fields B=10^12-5x10^14 G and effective temperatures T_eff a few x 10^5-10^6 K by solving the full radiative transfer equations for…
Thermal surface emissions have now been detected from more than a dozen isolated neutron stars, including radio pulsars, radio-quiet neutron stars and magnetars. These detections can potentially provide important information on the interior…
It is a common belief that for magnetic fields typical for accreting neutron stars in High-Mass X-ray Binaries vacuum polarization only affects the propagation of polarized emission in the neutron star magnetosphere. We show that vacuum…
Extremely strong magnetic fields change the vacuum index of refraction. Although this polarization dependent effect is small for typical neutron stars, it is large enough to decouple the polarization states of photons traveling within the…
Polarization is one of the fundamental natures of electromagnetic radiation. The detection of polarization or polarized photons from distant X-ray radiating systems (such as X-ray binaries (XBs), active galactic nuclei (AGN), pulsars, and…
The thermal emission of strongly magnetized neutron-star atmospheres is thought to be highly polarized. However, because of the different orientations of the magnetic field over the surface of the neutron star (NS), it is commonly assumed…