Physics of strongly magnetized neutron stars
By A. Harding, D. Lai. 2006
631 citations recorded by the source corpus.
There has recently been growing evidence for the existence of neutron stars possessing magnetic fields with strengths that exceed the quantum critical field strength of 4.4 × 1013 G, at which the cyclotron energy equals the electron rest mass. Such evidence has been provided by new discoveries of radio pulsars having very high spin-down rates and by observations of bursting gamma-ray sources termed magnetars. This paper will discuss the exotic physics of this high-field regime, where a new array of processes becomes possible and even dominant and where familiar processes acquire unusual properties. We review the physical processes that are important in neutron star interiors and magnetospheres, including the behaviour of free particles, atoms, molecules, plasma and condensed matter in strong magnetic fields, photon propagation in magnetized plasmas, free-particle radiative processes, the physics of neutron star interiors and field evolution and decay mechanisms. Application of such processes in astrophysical source models, including rotation-powered pulsars, soft gamma-ray repeaters, anomalous x-ray pulsars and accreting x-ray pulsars will also be discussed. Throughout this review, we will highlight the observational signatures of high magnetic field processes, as well as the theoretical issues that remain to be understood.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Geophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c1b466fc651bcac2e934e47c76d09802102f35df
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Citations in the corpus
- Magnetic field dissipation in neutron star crusts: From magnetars to isolated neutron stars (2007, background): “There is quite general agreement that the magnetic field in ultramagnetized NSs (magnetars) decays on timescales of 10 3 –10 5 years (Woods & Thompson 2006; Harding & Lai 2006).”
- A Reconnection Switch to Trigger gamma-Ray Burst Jet Dissipation (2010, background): “This effect, a calculation of (Comptonized) spectra, and related QED effects (Harding & Lai 2006) are left for future work.”
- Three-dimensional GRMHD Simulations of Neutrino-cooled Accretion Disks from Neutron Star Mergers (2017, background): “…relevant for densities below a critical density (Haensel et al. 2007; Harding & Lai 2006; Kiuchi et al. 2015a) ρB = 2.23× 109 ( Ye 0.1 )−1( B 1015G )3/2 g cm−3 (47) and/or below a critical temperature TB (Harding & Lai 2006) TB = mec 2 kB (√ 2B BQ + 1− 1 ) , ρ ≤ ρB ~ωc kB (1 + x2F ) −1/2, ρ ρB .”
- Colloquium : nonlinear collective interactions in quantum plasmas with degenerate electron fluids (2010, background): “…plasmas are currently of wide interest due to their applications to astrophysical and cosmological environments (Benvenuto and De Vito, 2005; Harding and Lai, 2006; Lai, 2001; Opher, 2001), as well as to inertial fusion science involving intense laser-solid density plasma interaction…”
- The 511 keV emission from positron annihilation in the Galaxy (2010, background): “Notice that in the extreme magnetic field conditions of magnetars the production of most of the e+-e− pairs is probably suppressed (Harding and Lai, 2006).”
- High-mass X-ray binaries in the Milky Way (2013, background): “…to simulate the shape of the continuum and CRSFs as a function of the pulse phase, source luminosity, geometry of the emission regions, etc (see, e.g., Araya and Harding, 1999; Araya-Góchez and Harding, 2000; Schönherr et al., 2007; Harding and Lai, 2006; Nishimura, 2008, and references therein).”
- The Astrophysics of Ultrahigh-Energy Cosmic Rays (2011, background): “Magnetars are neutron stars with extremely strong surface dipole fields of order 1015 G (see Wood & Thompson 2004, Harding & Lai 2006 and Merghetti 2008 for reviews).”