arXivDaily arXiv每日学术速递 周一至周五更新
北美退伍军人节(Veterans Day),12 日无更新
arXiv 1904.03315astro-ph.HE
收藏

中子星磁层中光子分裂和对产生的不透明度

Opacities for Photon Splitting and Pair Creation in Neutron Star Magnetospheres

Kun Hu, Matthew G. Baring, Zorawar Wadiasingh, Alice K. Harding

摘要:

在过去的四十年里,各种望远镜观测到的磁星的持续和闪耀发射为我们提供了一套软X射线和硬X射线的光变曲线和光谱,尚未检测到超过1 MeV的发射。磁对产生和光子分裂导致的高能光子衰减预计在磁星的磁层中很活跃,这可能是它们信号中伽马射线缺乏的原因。本文研究了高磁化中子星的静态真空偶极磁层中这两个QED过程的偏振相关不透明度,计算了衰减长度,确定了逃逸能量,即光子在无限远透明时的最大能量。在平坦和弯曲的时空的数值轨迹积分分析提供了几兆电子伏或更少的可见能量的磁星接近恒星表面的地方的上限。光子分裂不透明度本身就限制了磁层中可能的发射区域:最大高度为2-4恒星半径的场环内区域与最大检测到的250千电子伏左右的能量不相称。这些限制不仅适用于磁星耀斑,但也对他们的静态硬X射线尾部发射。探索光子分裂衰减的背景下的共振逆康普顿散射模型的硬X射线尾巴得到独特的相位分辨光谱和极化签名,未来的MeV波段的任务,如AMEGO和e-ASTROGAM的重大利益。

英文摘要:

Over the last four decades, persistent and flaring emission of magnetars observed by various telescopes has provided us with a suite of light curves and spectra in soft and hard X-rays, with no emission yet detected above around 1 MeV. Attenuation of such high-energy photons by magnetic pair creation and photon splitting is expected to be active in the magnetospheres of magnetars, possibly accounting for the paucity of gamma-rays in their signals. This paper explores polarization-dependent opacities for these two QED processes in static vacuum dipole magnetospheres of highly-magnetized neutron stars, calculating attenuation lengths and determining escape energies, which are the maximum photon energies for transparency out to infinity. The numerical trajectory integral analysis in flat and curved spacetimes provides upper bounds of a few MeV or less to the visible energies for magnetars for locales proximate to the stellar surface. Photon splitting opacity alone puts constraints on the possible emission locales in their magnetospheres: regions within field loops of maximum altitudes 2-4 stellar radii are not commensurate with maximum detected energies of around 250 keV. These constraints apply not only to magnetar flares but also to their quiescent hard X-ray tail emission. An exploration of photon splitting attenuation in the context of a resonant inverse Compton scattering model for the hard X-ray tails derives distinctive phase-resolved spectroscopic and polarimetric signatures, of significant interest for future MeV-band missions such as AMEGO and e-ASTROGAM.

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。

↑