Thermal luminosities of cooling neutron stars

Abstract

Ages and thermal luminosities of neutron stars, inferred from observations, can be interpreted with the aid of the neutron star cooling theory to gain information on the properties of superdense matter in neutron-star interiors. We present a survey of estimated ages, surface temperatures and thermal luminosities of middle-aged neutron stars with relatively weak or moderately strong magnetic fields, which can be useful for these purposes. The catalogue includes results selected from the literature, supplemented with new results of spectral analysis of a few cooling neutron stars. The data are compared with the theory. We show that overall agreement of theoretical cooling curves with observations improves substantially for models where neutron superfluidity in stellar core is weak.

Probing dark gauge boson with observations from neutron stars

“…At temperatures below the critical temperature of Cooper pair formation, the nucleon bremsstrahlung rate may be suppressed by nucleon superfluidity. However, recent studies [47] on NS cooling indicate that neutron superfluidity in the middle-aged NS core is weak and the critical temperatures are possibly too low to be relevant for our analyses. Thus, following ref.…”