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arXiv 0708.3863astro-ph
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磁中子星的凝聚表面、热表面发射和脉冲星极盖上方的粒子加速

Condensed Surfaces of Magnetic Neutron Stars, Thermal Surface Emission, and Particle Acceleration Above Pulsar Polar Caps

Zach Medin, Dong Lai

摘要:

在足够强的磁场和/或低温下,中子星表面可能处于凝聚态,其上几乎没有气体或等离子体。这种表面凝聚可以显著影响孤立中子星的热辐射,并可能导致在恒星极盖上方的磁层中形成电荷耗尽的加速区(“真空间隙”)。利用磁凝聚物质凝聚性质的最新结果,定量地确定了磁中子星表面凝聚和真空隙形成的条件。我们发现,如果中子星表面的热能kT小于其内能Q_s的8%左右,就会发生凝聚;如果中子星的自转轴和磁矩指向相反的方向,并且kT小于Q_s的4%左右,就会形成真空间隙。因此,某些中子星可能存在真空间隙加速器。基于这一结果,我们还研究了真空间隙模型中由于曲率辐射和共振/非共振逆康普顿散射而加速电子和正电子的光子发射的对级联物理。我们的级联诱导真空击穿的条件和相关的脉冲星死亡线/边界的计算推广到超强场制度以前的工作。我们发现,逆康普顿散射不产生足够数量的高能量光子的间隙,因此不会导致对级联的大多数中子星参数。我们讨论了我们的研究结果的影响,最近的观测中子星热辐射,以及为检测/未检测到的无线电发射的高B星和磁星。

英文摘要:

For sufficiently strong magnetic fields and/or low temperatures, the neutron star surface may be in a condensed state with little gas or plasma above it. Such surface condensation can significantly affect the thermal emission from isolated neutron stars, and may lead to the formation of a charge-depleted acceleration zone ("vacuum gap") in the magnetosphere above the stellar polar cap. Using the latest results on the cohesive property of magnetic condensed matter, we quantitatively determine the conditions for surface condensation and vacuum gap formation in magnetic neutron stars. We find that condensation can occur if the thermal energy kT of the neutron star surface is less than about 8% of its cohesive energy Q_s, and that a vacuum gap can form if the neutron star's rotation axis and magnetic moment point in opposite directions and kT is less than about 4% of Q_s. Thus, vacuum gap accelerators may exist for some neutron stars. Motivated by this result, we also study the physics of pair cascades in the vacuum gap model for photon emission by accelerating electrons and positrons due to both curvature radiation and resonant/nonresonant inverse Compton scattering. Our calculations of the condition of cascade-induced vacuum breakdown and the related pulsar death line/boundary generalize previous works to the superstrong field regime. We find that inverse Compton scatterings do not produce a sufficient number of high energy photons in the gap and thus do not lead to pair cascades for most neutron star parameters. We discuss the implications of our results for the recent observations of neutron star thermal radiation as well as for the detection/non-detection of radio emission from high-B pulsars and magnetars.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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