Minimal Cooling of Neutron Stars: A New Paradigm

By D. Page, J. Lattimer, M. Prakash, A. Steiner. 2004

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A new classification of neutron star cooling scenarios, involving either "minimal" cooling or "enhanced" cooling, is proposed. The minimal cooling scenario replaces and extends the so-called standard cooling scenario to include neutrino emission from the Cooper pair breaking and formation process. This emission dominates that due to the modified Urca process for temperatures close to the critical temperature for superfluid pairing. Minimal cooling is distinguished from enhanced cooling by the absence of neutrino emission from any direct Urca process, due either to nucleons or to exotica such as hyperons, Bose condensates, or deconfined quarks. Within the minimal cooling scenario, theoretical cooling models can be considered to be a four parameter family involving the equation of state (including various compositional possibilities) of dense matter, superfluid properties of dense matter, the composition of the neutron star envelope, and the mass of the neutron star. The consequences of minimal cooling are explored through extensive variations of these parameters. The results are compared with the inferred properties of thermally emitting neutron stars in order to ascertain if enhanced cooling occurs in any of them. All stars for which thermal emissions have been clearly detected are at least marginally consistent with the lack of enhanced cooling, given the combined uncertainties in ages and temperatures or luminosities. The two pulsars PSR 0833-45 (Vela) and PSR 1706-44 would require enhanced cooling in case their ages and/or temperatures are on the lower side of their estimated values, whereas the four stars PSR 0656+14, PSR 1055-52, Geminga, and RX J0720.4-3125 may require some source of internal heating in case their age and/or luminosity are on the upper side of their estimated values. The new upper limits on the thermal luminosity of PSR J0205+6449 (in the supernova remnant 3C 58) and RX J0007.0+7302 (in CTA 1) are indicative of the occurrence of some enhanced neutrino emission beyond the minimal scenario.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2c75068cd4d62a6d000198b46bbfae6eb88cb7eb

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Citations in the corpus

SPIN-DOWN MEASUREMENT OF PSR J1852+0040 IN KESTEVEN 79: CENTRAL COMPACT OBJECTS AS ANTI-MAGNETARS (2009, background): “While the X-ray luminosity of PSR J1852+0040, 5 × 1033 erg s−1, is consistent with minimum neutron star cooling scenarios (Page et al. 2004, 2007) for the age of Kes 79 (5.4–7.5 kyr; Sun et al. 2004), the high temperatures and small surface areas fitted to the X-ray spectrum are difficult to…”
Symmetry Parameter Constraints from a Lower Bound on Neutron-matter Energy (2016, background): “Current estimates of the temperatures and ages of observed neutron stars are consistent with the interpretation that only a small fraction have cooled rapidly (Page et al. 2004).”
Magneto-thermal evolution of neutron stars (2008, positive): “In this paper we assume the minimal cooling scenario (Page et al. 2004) which includes neutrino emission from the Cooper pair breaking and formation process, but we do not take any direct Urca process into account, due either to nucleons or to exotic matter (hyperons, Bose condensates, or…”
Cooling neutron star in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant: evidence for superfluidity in the core (2010, methodology): “…all isolated NSs. Similar models of NSs withnucleon cores, where direct Urca is forbidden but CPF operates, w re used as the basis of the minimal cooling theory (Page et al. 2004, 2006, 2009) although that theory employs selectedTc(ρ) profiles, most favorable by the theory of nucleon superfluidity.”
Neutron Stars—Cooling and Transport (2015, background): “3.3), which helps to explain the variety of the observed surface temperatures of cooling neutron stars (Gusakov et al. 2004; Page et al. 2004).”
Long Type I X-Ray Bursts and Neutron Star Interior Physics (2005, background): “9 in Page et al. 2004) and hence strong proton superconductivity, to avoid the proton 1S0 Cooper pair neutrinos, probably requires a very low mass star.”
NEUTRINO EMISSION FROM COOPER PAIRS AND MINIMAL COOLING OF NEUTRON STARS (2009, background): “Page et al. (2004) (hereafter referred to as Paper I) introduced the minimal cooling paradigm to address the question of whether or not there exists observational evidence that firmly indicates that enhanced cooling takes place in some neutron stars.”
Constraining the Equation of State with Moment of Inertia Measurements (2004, background): “Currently, one source of candidates for revealing radii is those neutron stars for which thermal X-ray and optical radiation have been observed (see Page et al. 2004 for a review).”
2D Cooling of Magnetized Neutron Stars (2007, background): “Theminimal cooling model, in which pairing between nucleons and the effects of superfluidity are both included (Page et al. 2004), is more realistic.”
Unifying the observational diversity of isolated neutron stars via magneto-thermal evolution models. (2013, methodology): “Page et al. (2004, 2009) proposed the socalled minimal cooling scenario, in which all the necessary known microphysical ingredients are consistently included (specific heat, conductivities, effects of superfluidity, neutrino emission processes), but fast neutrino-cooling processes (direct URCA by…”
DIRECT OBSERVATION OF THE COOLING OF THE CASSIOPEIA A NEUTRON STAR (2010, background): “We have not taken into account the large (suppression) effects of superfluidity on the neutrino luminosity and nucleon heat capacity because of the relatively-unknown critical temperature at which these effects begin to occur (see Page et al. 2004, and references therein).”