Thermal emission during X-ray bursts is a powerful tool to determine neutron star masses and radii, if the Eddington flux and the apparent radius in the cooling tail can be measured accurately, and distances to the sources are known. We propose here an improved method of determining the basic stellar parameters using the data from the cooling phase of photospheric radius expansion bursts covering a large range of luminosities. Because at that phase the blackbody apparent radius depends only on the spectral hardening factor (color-correction), we suggest to fit the theoretical dependences of the color-correction versus flux in Eddington units to the observed variations of the inverse square root of the apparent blackbody radius with the flux. We show that spectral variations observed during a long photospheric radius expansion burst from 4U 1724-307 are entirely consistent with the theoretical expectations for the passively cooling neutron star atmospheres. Our method allows us to determine both the Eddington flux (which is found to be smaller than the touchdown flux by 15%) and the ratio of the stellar apparent radius to the distance much more reliably. We then find a lower limit on the neutron star radius of 14 km for masses below 2.2M_sun, independently of the chemical composition. These results suggest that the matter inside neutron stars is characterized by a stiff equation of state. We finally show that the apparent blackbody emitting area in the cooling tails of the short bursts from 4U 1724-307 is two times smaller than that for the long burst and their evolution does not follow the theory. This makes their usage for determination of the neutron star parameters questionable and casts serious doubts on the results of previous works that used for the analysis similar bursts from other sources. [abridged]
Type-I X-ray bursts on the surface of a neutron star are a unique probe to the accretion in X-ray binary systems. However, we know little about the feedback of the burst emission upon accretion. Hard X-ray shortages and enhancements of the persistent emission at soft X-rays have been observed. To put these findings in context with the aim of understanding the possible mechanism underneath, we investigated 68 bursts seen by RXTE from the clocked burster GS 1826--238. We diagnosed jointly the burst influence at both soft and hard X-rays, and found that the observations can be described as the Co…
The Rapid Burster (MXB 1730-335) is a unique object, showing both type I and type II X-ray bursts. A type I burst of the Rapid Burster was observed with Swift/XRT on 2009 March 5, showing photospheric radius expansion for the first time in this source. We report here on the mass and radius determination from this photospheric radius expansion burst using a Bayesian approach. After marginalization over the likely distance of the system (5.8-10 kpc) we obtain M=1.1+/-0.3 M_sun and R=9.6+/-1.5 km (1-sigma uncertainties) for the compact object, ruling out the stiffest equations of state for the ne…
We perform time-resolved spectroscopy of all the type I bursts from the Rapid Burster (MXB 1730-335) detected with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. Type I bursts are detected at high accretion rates, up to \sim 45% of the Eddington luminosity. We find evidence that bursts lacking the canonical cooling in their time-resolved spectra are, none the less, thermonuclear in nature. The type I bursting rate keeps increasing with the persistent luminosity, well above the threshold at which it is known to abruptly drop in other bursting low-mass X-ray binaries. The only other known source in which the …
Recent evidence for high masses ($\sim 2~ M_\odot$) pulsars PSR J1614-2230 and PSR J0348-0432 requires neutron star matter to have a stiff equation of state (EoS). The thermal evolution of compact stars (CS) with stiff hadronic EoS necessitates the application of the "nuclear medium cooling" scenario with a selection of appropriate proton gap profiles together with in-medium effects (like pion softening) on cooling mechanisms in order to achieve a satisfactory explanation of all existing observational data for the temperature-age relation of CS. Here we focus on two examples from \cite{Grigori…
Within the "nuclear medium cooling" scenario of neutron stars all reliably known temperature - age data, including those of the central compact objects in the supernova remnants of Cassiopeia A and XMMU-J1732, can be comfortably explained by a set of cooling curves obtained by variation of the star mass within the range of typical observed masses. The recent measurements of the high masses of the pulsars PSR J1614-2230 and PSR J0348-0432 on the one hand, and of the low masses for PSR J0737-3039B and the companion of PSR J1756-2251 on the other, provide independent proof for the existence of ne…
We demonstrate that the existing neutron-star cooling data can be appropriately described within "the nuclear medium cooling scenario" including hyperons under the assumption that different sources have different masses. We use a stiff equation of state of the relativistic mean-field model MKVORH$ϕ$ with hadron effective couplings and masses dependent on the scalar field. It fulfills a large number of experimental constraints on the equation of state of the nuclear matter including the $2\,M_{\odot}$ lower bound for the maximum predicted neutron-star mass and the constraint for the pressure fr…
The existence of high mass ($\sim 2M_{\odot}$) pulsars PSR J1614-2230 and PSR J0348-0432 requires the compact star matter to be described by a stiff equation of state (EoS). Presence of hyperons in neutron stars leads to a softening of the EoS that results in a decrease of the maximum neutron-star mass below the measured values of masses for PSR J1614-2230 and PSR J0348-0432 pulsars if one exploits ordinary relativistic mean-field (RMF) models (hyperon puzzle). However, within an RMF EoS with a sigma-scaled hadron effective masses and coupling constants, the maximum neutron-star mass remains a…
The recent measurements of the masses of the pulsar J00737-3039B and of the companion J1756-2251 and pulsars PSR J1614-2230, PSR J0348-0432 demonstrate the existence of compact stars with masses in a broad range from 1.2 to 2 $M_\odot$. To fulfill the constraint $M_{\rm max}>2M_{\odot}$ and to demonstrate the possibility of cooling scenarios for purely hadronic and further for hybrid stars we exploit the stiff DD2 hadronic equation of state producing a maximum neutron star mass $M\simeq 2.43 M_{\odot}$. We show that the "nuclear medium cooling" scenario for neutron stars comfortably explains t…
Measurements demonstrate the existence of compact stars with masses in a broad range from 1.2 to 2 $M_\odot$. The most massive of these objects might be hybrid stars. To fulfill the constraint $M_{\rm max}>2~M_{\odot}$ with a reserve we exploit the stiff DD2 hadronic equation of state (EoS) without and with excluded volume (DD2vex) correction, which produce maximum neutron star masses of $M_{\rm max} = 2.43~M_{\odot}$ and $2.70~M_{\odot}$, respectively. We show that the stiffness of the EoS does not preclude an explanation of the whole set of cooling data within "nuclear medium cooling" scenar…
In this paper, we have carried out a detailed study of the `Clocked' burster GS $1826-238$ using $\sim$ 90 ks broad-band (0.7 - 60.0 keV) data obtained with {\it AstroSat} observatory. The source was observed during a soft spectral state and traced a `banana' type track in the colour-colour diagram (CCD). We find that a combination of thermal component (multi-colour disc/bbodyrad) and Comptonized component is statistically good description for all the sections of the track in the CCD. The corona becomes optically thick ($τ$ increases from $\sim$ 5 to 21) and cooler ($kT_e$ decreases from $\sim…
We investigate the impacts of neutrino cooling mechanism inside the neutron star (NS) core on the light curves of type-I X-ray bursts and X-ray superbursts. From several observations of NS thermal evolution, physical processes of fast neutrino cooling, such as the direct Urca (DU) process, are indicated. They significantly decrease the surface temperature of NSs, though the cooling effect could be suppressed by nucleon superfluidity. In the present study, focusing on the DU process and nucleon superfluidity, we investigate the effects of NS cooling on the X-ray bursts using a general-relativis…
Type I X-ray bursts are thermonuclear explosions on the neutron star (NS) surface caused by mass accretion from a companion star. Observations of X-ray bursts provide valuable information on X-ray binary systems, e.g., binary parameters, the chemical composition of accreted matter, and the nuclear equation of state (EOS) of NSs. There have been several theoretical studies to constrain the physics of X-ray bursters. However, they have mainly focused on the burning layers above the solid crust of the NS, which brings up issues of the treatment of NS gravitation and internal energy. In this study…
We report the discovery of one-hour long tails on the few-minutes long X-ray bursts from the `clocked burster' GS 1826-24. We propose that the tails are due to enduring thermal radiation from the neutron star envelope. The enduring emission can be explained by cooling of deeper NS layers which were heated up through inward conduction of heat produced in the thermonuclear shell flash responsible for the burst. Similar, though somewhat shorter, tails are seen in bursts from EXO 0748-676 and 4U 1728-34. Only a small amount of cooling is detected in all these tails. This is either due to compton u…
The two recent density-dependent versions of the finite-range M3Y interaction (CDM3Y$n$ and M3Y-P$n$) have been probed against the bulk properties of asymmetric nuclear matter (NM) in the nonrelativistic Hartree Fock (HF) formalism. The same HF study has also been done with the famous Skyrme (SLy4) and Gogny (D1S and D1N) interactions which were well tested in the nuclear structure calculations. Our HF results are compared with those given by other many-body calculations like the Dirac-Brueckner Hartree-Fock approach or ab-initio variational calculation using free nucleon-nucleon interaction, …
We studied thermal evolution of isolated neutron stars (NSs) including the pion condensation core, with an emphasis on the stiffness of equation of state (EOS). Many temperature observations can be explained by the minimal cooling scenario which excludes the fast neutrino cooling process. However, several NSs are cold enough to require it. The most crucial problem for NS cooling theory is whether the nucleon direct Urca (DU) process is open. The DU process is forbidden if the nucleon symmetry energy is significantly low. Hence, another fast cooling process is required in such an EOS. As the ca…
Recently, Elshamounty et al. performed a reanalysis of the surface temperature of the neutron star in the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A on the basis of Chandra data measured during last decade, and added a new data point. We show that all reliably known temperature data of neutron stars including those belonging to Cassiopea A can be comfortably explained in our "nuclear medium cooling" scenario of neutron stars. The cooling rates account for medium-modified one-pion exchange in dense matter, polarization effects in the pair-breaking-formation processes operating on superfluid neutrons and pr…
We investigate the cooling of neutron stars with relativistic and non-relativistic models of dense nuclear matter. We focus on the effects of uncertainties originated from the nuclear models, the composition of elements in the envelope region, and the formation of superfluidity in the core and the crust of neutron stars. Discovery of $2 M_\odot$ neutron stars PSR J1614-2230 and PSR J0343+0432 has triggered the revival of stiff nuclear equation of state at high densities. In the mean time, observation of a neutron star in Cassiopeia A for more than 10 years has provided us with very accurate da…
Type I X-ray bursts in GS 1826-24, and in several other systems, may induce cooling of the hot inner accretion flow that surrounds the bursting neutron star. Given that GS 1826-24 remained persistently in the hard state over the period 2003-2008 and presented regular bursting properties, we stacked the spectra of the X-ray bursts detected by INTEGRAL (JEM-X and ISGRI) and XMM-Newton (RGS) during that period to study the effect of the burst photons on the properties of the Comptonizing medium. The extended energy range provided by these instruments allows the simultaneous observation of the bur…
When the upper layer of an accreting neutron star experiences a thermonuclear runaway of helium and hydrogen, it exhibits an X-ray burst of a few keV with a cool-down phase of typically 1~minute. When there is a surplus of hydrogen, hydrogen fusion is expected to simmer during that same minute due to the rp process, which consists of rapid proton captures and slow beta-decays of proton-rich isotopes. We have analyzed the high-quality light curves of 1254 X-ray bursts, obtained with the Proportional Counter Array on the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer between 1996 and 2012, to systematically study …
Insight-HXMT observations on thermonuclear X-ray bursts from 4U~1608--52 in the low/hard state: the energy-dependant hard X-ray deficit and cooling saturation of the corona
Cooling of Isolated Neutron Stars with Hyperon-mixed Kaon-Condensation Matter
The University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学）；Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee（印度理工学院鲁尔基分校）；RIKEN（理化学研究所）；Chiba Institute of Technology（千叶工业大学）；Kurume Institute of Technology（久留米工业大学）
Extending multi-messenger constraints on neutron star matter through the inclusion of direct Urca cooling
Universität Potsdam（波茨坦大学）；National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN)（国家研究与创新署）；Utrecht University（乌得勒支大学）；Nikhef（尼赫夫）；Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)（马克斯·普朗克引力物理研究所（爱因斯坦研究所））
We determine an empirical dense matter equation of state from a heterogeneous dataset of six neutron stars: three type I X-ray bursters with photospheric radius expansion, studied by Ozel et al., and three transient low-mass X-ray binaries. We critically assess the mass and radius determinations from the X-ray burst sources and show explicitly how systematic uncertainties, such as the photospheric radius at touchdown, affect the most probable masses and radii. We introduce a parameterized equation of state and use a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm within a Bayesian framework to determine nu…
We study the merger of binary neutron stars using different realistic, microphysical nuclear equations of state, as well as incorporating magnetic field and neutrino cooling effects. In particular, we concentrate on the influence of the equation of state on the gravitational wave signature and also on its role, in combination with cooling and electromagnetic effects, in determining the properties of the hypermassive neutron star resulting from the merger, the production of neutrinos, and the characteristics of ejecta from the system. The ejecta we find are consistent with other recent studies …
We report results obtained from the study of 12 thermonuclear X-ray bursts in 6 AstroSat observations of a neutron star X-ray binary and well-known X-ray burster, 4U 1636$-$536. Burst oscillations at $\sim$581 Hz are observed with 4$-$5$σ$ confidence in three of these X-ray bursts. The rising phase burst oscillations show a decreasing trend of the fractional rms amplitude at 3$σ$ confidence,by far the strongest evidence of thermonuclear flame spreading observed with AstroSat. During the initial 0.25 second of the rise a very high value (34.0$\pm$6.7%) is observed. The concave shape of the frac…
Joint XMM-Newton and NuSTAR Observations of Type I X-ray Bursts from the Dipping Low-Mass X-ray Binary 4U 1323-62
Istanbul University（伊斯坦布尔大学）；Sabancı University（萨班吉大学）；University of Southampton（南安普顿大学）；University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学）；Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）
Influence of effective mass of the relativistic mean field theory on core collapse supernovae and compact objects
National Institute of Technology, Numazu College（国立大学法人沼津工业高等专门学校）；Department of Physics, Kyoto University（京都大学）；College of Science and Engineering, Kanto Gakuin University（关东学院大学理工学部）；School of Physics, Nankai University（南开大学物理科学学院）；Faculty of Arts and Science, Kyushu University（九州大学艺工学部）；Faculty of Science & Technology, Tokyo University of Science（东京理科大学理学部·工学部）
Aims. INTEGRAL has been monitoring the Galactic center region for more than a decade. Over this time INTEGRAL has detected hundreds of type-I X-ray bursts from the neutron star low-mass X-ray binary 4U 1728-34, a.k.a. "the slow burster". Our aim is to study the connection between the persistent X-ray spectra and the X-ray burst spectra in a broad spectral range. Methods. We performed spectral modeling of the persistent emission and the X-ray burst emission of 4U 1728-34 using data from the INTEGRAL JEM-X and IBIS/ISGRI instruments. Results. We constructed a hardness intensity diagram to track …
On the basis of the percolation picture from the hadronic phase with hyperons to the quark phase with strangeness, we construct a new equation of state (EOS) with the pressure interpolated as a function of the baryon density. The maximum mass of neutron stars can exceed $2M_{\odot}$ if the following two conditions are satisfied; (i) the crossover from the hadronic matter to the quark matter takes place at around three times the normal nuclear matter density, and (ii) the quark matter is strongly interacting in the crossover region and has stiff equation of state. This is in contrast to the con…
Numerical simulations for the merger of binary neutron stars are performed in full general relativity incorporating a finite-temperature (Shen's) equation of state (EOS) and neutrino cooling for the first time. It is found that for this stiff EOS, a hypermassive neutron star (HMNS) with a long lifetime ($\gg 10$ ms) is the outcome for the total mass $\alt 3.0M_{\odot}$. It is shown that the typical total neutrino luminosity of the HMNS is $\sim 3$--$8\times 10^{53}$ ergs/s and the effective amplitude of gravitational waves from the HMNS is 4--$6 \times 10^{-22}$ at $f=2.1$--2.5 kHz for a sourc…
We report on two NuSTAR observations of GRS 1741.9-2853, a faint neutron star low mass X-ray binary burster located 10' away from the Galactic center. NuSTAR detected the source serendipitously as it was emerging from quiescence: its luminosity was $6\times 10^{34}$ erg~s$^{-1}$ on 2013 July 31, and $5\times 10^{35}$ erg~s$^{-1}$ in a second observation on 2013 August 3. A bright, 800-s long, H-triggered mixed H/He thermonuclear Type I burst with mild photospheric radius expansion (PRE) was present during the second observation. Assuming that the luminosity during the PRE was at the Eddington …
We perform radiation-hydrodynamics simulations of binary neutron star mergers in numerical relativity on the Japanese "K" supercomputer, taking into account neutrino cooling and heating by an updated leakage-plus-transfer scheme for the first time. Neutron stars are modeled by three modern finite-temperature equations of state (EOS) developed by Hempel and his collaborators. We find that the properties of the dynamical ejecta of the merger such as total mass, average electron fraction, and thermal energy depend strongly on the EOS. Only for a soft EOS (the so-called SFHo), the ejecta mass exce…
The nuclear mean-field potentials obtained in the Hartree-Fock method with different choices of the in-medium nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction have been used to study the equation of state (EOS) of the neutron star (NS) matter. The EOS of the uniform NS core has been calculated for the np$eμ$ composition in the $β$-equilibrium at zero temperature, using version Sly4 of the Skyrme interaction as well as two density-dependent versions of the finite-range M3Y interaction (CDM3Y$n$ and M3Y-P$n$), and versions D1S and D1N of the Gogny interaction. Although the considered effective NN interactions w…
S-wave kaon condensation in neutron-star matter within a chiral model framework with dynamical meson masses
Center for Nuclear Research, Department of Physics, Kent State University（肯特州立大学核研究中心物理系）；Department of Physics, Kent State University（肯特州立大学物理系）；Department of Physics, MRPD Government College Talwara（塔尔瓦拉MRPD政府学院物理系）；Department of Physics, University of Houston（休斯顿大学物理系）；Department of Physics, Catholic Institute of Technology（天主教理工学院物理系）；Universidade Federal Fluminense（弗鲁米嫩塞联邦大学）；ICRANet（国际相对论天体物理中心网络）
Neutron Star Mass-Radius Constraints for EXO 0748$-$676 from 2008-2025 Quiescent X-ray Spectra
Xiamen University（厦门大学）；Yunnan Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)（中国科学院云南天文台）；Key Laboratory for the Structure and Evolution of Celestial Objects, CAS（中国科学院天体结构与演化重点实验室）
A self-consistent single-fluid framework for neutron stars admixed with mirror dark matter
University of Coimbra（科英布拉大学）；Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica（航空技术学院）；Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina（圣卡塔琳娜联邦大学）；University of Tübingen（蒂宾根大学）
