AbstractSince their discovery, neutron stars have been recognized to be unique natural laboratories for helping our understanding of fundamental physics, including nuclear and particle physics and the theory of gravity. The excellent sensitivity of the new X-ray telescopes, e.g., Chandra and XMM-Newton, is ideal for the study of cooling, isolated neutron stars, which emit at these energies. In order to exploit the wealth of information contained in the data, a thorough knowledge of the emission properties of neutron stars is necessary. We describe our work on constructing atmosphere models, which determine the observed spectra from neutron stars. In particular, we discuss the effects of vacuum polarization and bound atoms on the atmosphere structure and spectra. We show that our partially ionized hydrogen atmosphere model spectra can fit the multi-wavelength spectrum of the neutron star RX J1856.5–3754. On the other hand, mid-Z element atmospheres may fit other isolated neutron stars, such as 1E 1207.4–5209.
Modeling atmosphere emission from magnetic neutron stars
Advances in Space Research ; 40 , 10 ; 1432-1440
2007-04-03
9 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Modeling atmosphere emission from magnetic neutron stars
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