Studying millisecond pulsars in X-rays

Model X‐Ray Spectra of Magnetic Neutron Stars with Hydrogen Atmospheres

“…Thermal radiation has been detected from radio pulsars and radio-quiet neutron stars (NSs; see Kaspi et al 2006;Haberl 2007;van Kerkwijk & Kaplan 2007;Zavlin 2007 for reviews) and from soft gamma-ray repeaters and anomalous X-ray pulsars, which form the magnetar class of NSs endowed with superstrong (B k 10 14 G) magnetic fields (see Woods & Thompson 2006 for a review). Radiation from the surface of these NSs can provide invaluable information on the physical properties and evolution of the NSs.…”

“…Steady progress has been made in modeling NS atmospheres (see Pavlov et al 1995;Ho & Lai 2001, 2003Zavlin 2007 for a more detailed discussion and references on NS atmosphere modeling). Since the NS surface emission is thermal in nature, it has been modeled at the lowest approximation with a blackbody spectrum.…”

Thermal radiation from magnetic neutron star surfaces

“…The strong (10 12−13 G) magnetic fields of pulsars suggest that most, if not all, neutron stars should have similarly strong fields. However, detailed atmosphere models with strong magnetic fields are only available for hydrogen (Zavlin et al 1995), because reliable opacities and EOS have not yet been developed for heavier elements and because of the complexity of modeling magnetic atmospheres with arbitrary magnetic field structures. For heavy-element dominated atmospheres, only approximate treatments of magnetic Fe atmospheres exist (Rajagopal, Romani, & Miller 1997), and the results show that the spectra are globally much closer to a blackbody than for light element atmospheres.…”