We model the thermal states of both isolated neutron stars and accreting neutron stars in X-ray transients in quiescence and confront them with observations. We use an equation of state and superfluid baryon gaps, which are consistently calculated. We conclude that the direct Urca process is required to be consistent with low-luminous accreting neutron stars. In addition, proton superfluidity and sufficiently weak neutron superfluidity are necessary to explain the cooling of middle-aged neutron stars and to obtain a realistic distribution of neutron star masses.
As the densities in the interior of neutron stars exceed those of terrestrial nuclear experiments, they provide a scope for studying the nature of dense matter under extreme conditions. The composition of the inner core of neutron stars is highly uncertain, and it is speculated that exotic forms of matter such as hyperons may appear there. Gravitational waves emitted by unstable oscillation modes in neutron stars contain information about their interior composition and therefore allow us to probe the interior directly. Recently, a systematic investigation of f-mode oscillations in neutron star…
There are two types of timing irregularities seen in pulsars: glitches and timing noise. Both of these phenomena can help us probe the interior of such exotic objects. This article presents a brief overview of the observational and theoretical aspects of pulsar timing irregularities and the main results from the investigations of these phenomena in India. The relevance of such Indian programs for monitoring of young pulsars with the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is presented, highlighting possible contributions of the Indian neutron star community to the upcoming SKA endeavour.
The occurrence of quark matter at the center of neutron stars is still in debate. This study defines some semi-empirical parameters that quantify the occurrence and the amount of quark matter at star interiors. These parameters show semi-universal relations across all the EoS. One parameter depends on the shifting of the keplerian mass-radius curve from the static one and shows it is a constant across all EoS. The Z-parameter shows how tidal deformability depends on the quark content of the star and the stiffness of the EoS. The quark content of the star also affects the compactness of the sta…
Understanding the average motion of a multitude of superfluid vortices in the interior of a neutron star is a key ingredient for most theories of pulsar glitches. In this paper we propose a kinetic approach to compute the mutual friction force that is responsible for the momentum exchange between the normal and superfluid components in a neutron star, where the mutual friction is extracted from a suitable average over the motion of many vortex lines. As a first step towards a better modelling of the repinning and depinning processes of many vortex lines in a neutron star, we consider here only…
We study a family of equations of state for hybrid neutron star matter. The hybrid EOS are obtained by a Maxwell construction of the first-order phase transition between a hadronic phase described by the relativistic density-functional EOS of the "DD2" class with excluded volume effects and a deconfined quark matter phase modeled by an instantaneous nonlocal version of the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model in SU(2)$_f$ with vector interactions and color superconductivity. The form factor in the nonlocal quark matter model is fitted to lattice QCD results in the Coulomb gauge. Owing to strong coupling i…
In this paper, we find the heat capacity of the magnetic dual chiral density wave (MDCDW) phase of dense quark matter and use it to explore the feasibility of this phase for a neutron star interior. MDCDW is a spatially inhomogeneous phase of quark matter known to be favored at intermediate densities over the chirally symmetric phase and the color-flavor-locked superconducting phase. By comparing our result to the lower limit of the core heat capacity established from observations of transiently accreting neutron stars, we show that the heat capacity of MDCDW quark matter is well above that lo…
Despite their long history and astrophysical importance, some of the key properties of neutron stars are still uncertain. The extreme conditions encountered in their interiors, involving matter of uncertain composition at extreme density and isospin asymmetry, uniquely determine the stars' macroscopic properties within General Relativity. Astrophysical constraints on those macroscopic properties, such as neutron star masses and radii, have long been used to understand the microscopic properties of the matter that forms them. In this article we discuss another astrophysically observable macrosc…
Bayesian inference favors quark matter in neutron star interiors
University of Wroclaw（弗罗茨瓦夫大学）；A. Alikhanyan National Science Lab（阿利哈尼亚扬国家科学实验室）；Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR)（德累斯顿-罗斯多夫亥姆霍兹中心）；Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS)（先进系统理解中心）
Neutron stars are a remarkable marriage of Einstein's theory of general relativity with nuclear physics. Their interiors harbor extreme matter that cannot be probed in the laboratory. At such high densities and pressures, their cores may consist predominantly of exotic matter such as free quarks or hyperons. Gravitational wave observations from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and from other interferometers, and X-ray observations from the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), are beginning to pierce through the veil. These observations provide infor…
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 c…
Information on the phase structure of strongly interacting matter at high baryon densities can be gained from observations of neutron stars and their detailed analysis. In the present work Bayesian inference methods are used to set constraints on the speed of sound in the interior of neutron stars, based on recent multi-messenger data in combination with limiting conditions from nuclear physics at low densities. Two general parametric representations are introduced for the sound speed $c_s$ in order to examine the independence with respect to choices for the parametrisation of Priors. Credible…
We study long-term thermal evolution of neutron stars in soft X-ray transients (SXTs), taking the deep crustal heating into account consistently with the changes of the composition of the crust. We collect observational estimates of average accretion rates and thermal luminosities of such neutron stars and compare the theory with observations. We perform simulations of thermal evolution of accreting neutron stars, considering the gradual replacement of the original nonaccreted crust by the reprocessed accreted matter, the neutrino and photon energy losses, and the deep crustal heating due to n…
Neutron stars (NS) are compact objects with strong gravitational fields, and a matter composition subject to extreme physical conditions. The properties of strongly interacting matter at ultra-high densities and temperatures impose a big challenge to our understanding and modelling tools. Some difficulties are critical, since one cannot reproduce such conditions in our laboratories or assess them purely from astronomical observations. The information we have about neutron star interiors are often extracted indirectly, e.g., from the star mass-radius relation. The mass and radius are global qua…
It is an open challenge to estimate systematically the physical parameters of neutron star interiors from pulsar timing data while separating spin wandering intrinsic to the pulsar (achromatic timing noise) from measurement noise and chromatic timing noise (due to propagation effects). In this paper we formulate the classic two-component, crust-superfluid model of neutron star interiors as a noise-driven, linear dynamical system and use a state-space-based expectation-maximization method to estimate the system parameters using gravitational-wave and electromagnetic timing data. Monte Carlo sim…
We investigate the effect of a pinned superfluid component on the gravitational wave emission of a rotating neutron star. Pinning of superfluid vortices to the flux-tubes in the outer core (where the protons are likely to form a type-II superconductor) is a possible mechanism to sustain long-lived and non-axisymmetric neutron currents in the interior, that break the axial symmetry of the unperturbed hydrostatic configuration. We consider pinning-induced perturbations to a stationary corotating configuration, and determine upper limits on the strength of gravitational wave emission due to the p…
The configuration of the magnetic field in the interior of a neutron star is mostly unknown from observations. Theoretical models of the interior magnetic field geometry tend to be oversimplified to avoid mathematical complexity and tend to be based on axisymmetric barotropic fluid systems. These static magnetic equilibrium configurations have been shown to be unstable on a short time scale against an infinitesimal perturbation. Given this instability, it is relevant to consider how more realistic neutron star physics affects the outcome. In particular, it makes sense to ask if elasticity, whi…
Probing Neutron Star Interiors and the Properties of Cold Ultra-dense Matter with the SKAO
The University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学）；Royal Holloway, University of London（伦敦大学皇家霍洛威学院）；Swinburne University of Technology（斯威本科技大学）；CNRS/in2p3, Laboratoire de Physique Corpusculaire (LPC Caen)（法国国家科学研究中心/欧洲粒子物理研究所，核物理实验室（卡昂））；The Institute of Mathematical Sciences（数学科学研究院）；Homi Bhabha National Institute（霍米·巴巴国立研究所）；Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences（波兰科学院尼古拉·哥白尼天文学中心）；University of Southampton（南安普顿大学）；Indian Institute of Science（印度科学学院）；Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC)（空间科学研究所（西班牙高等科学研究委员会下属））；University of Cape Town（开普敦大学）；National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand（泰国国家天文研究所）；Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学安东·潘内库克天文学研究所）
Near the surface of any neutron star there is a thin heat blanketing envelope that produces substantial thermal insulation of warm neutron star interiors and that relates the internal temperature of the star to its effective surface temperature. Physical processes in the blanketing envelopes are reasonably clear but the chemical composition is not. The latter circumstance complicates inferring physical parameters of matter in the stellar interiors from observations of the thermal surface radiation of the stars and urges one to elaborate the models of blanketing envelopes. We outline physical p…
