The Thermal radiation of the isolated neutron star RX J1856.5-3754 observed with Chandra and XMM-Newton
By V. Burwitz, F. Haberl, R. Neuhäuser, P. Predehl, J. Trümper, V. Zavlin. 2002
162 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We present results of the analysis of data collected in 57-ks XMM-Newton and 505-ks Chandra observations of the nearby ($\simeq $120 pc) isolated neutron star RX J1856.5–3754. We confirm most of the statements made by Burwitz et al. (2001) who discussed the original 55-ks Chandra data. Detailed spectral analysis of the combined X-ray and optical data rules out the currently available nonmagnetic light and heavy element neutron star atmosphere (LTE) models with hydrogen, helium, iron and solar compositions. We find that strongly magnetized atmosphere models also are unable to represent the data. The X-ray and optical data show no spectral features and are best fitted with a two-component blackbody model with $kT_{\rm bb,X}^\infty \simeq 63.5$ eV and $R_{\rm bb,X}^\infty\simeq\,4.4\,(d/120\,\rm pc)$ km for the hot X-ray emitting region, and $kT_{\rm bb,opt}^\infty $ 17 ( d /120 pc) km for the rest of the neutron star surface responsible for the optical flux. The large number of counts collected with XMM-Newton allows us to reduce the upper limit on periodic variation in the X-ray range down to 1.3% (at a 2 σ confidence level) in the $10^{-3}{-}50$ Hz frequency range. In an attempt to explain this small variability, we discuss an one-component model with $kT_{\rm bb}^{\infty}\simeq 63$ eV and $R_{\rm bb}^{\infty}\simeq 12.3\,(d/120\,{\rm pc})$ km. This model requires a low radiative efficiency in the X-ray domain, which may be expected if the neutron star has a condensed matter surface.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fd0672e2ed34504edcc99a7eddcf823f44d07eaa
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
Citations in the corpus
- THE EQUATION OF STATE FROM OBSERVED MASSES AND RADII OF NEUTRON STARS (2010, methodology): “A two-temperature blackbody model, in which the X-ray flux isprimarily emitted by a high-temperature region and the optical flux by a low-temperature region, gives R∞/D ≃ 0.14 km pc−1, approximately the same value determined by Pons et al. (2002) and Burwitz et al.(2003).”
- Minimal Cooling of Neutron Stars: A New Paradigm (2004, methodology): “We take the blackbody spectral fitting from Drake et al. (2002) and Burwitz et al. (2003) for the warm component and fits for the colder component from Pons et al. (2002).”
- Physics of strongly magnetized neutron stars (2006, background): “5-3754, has a featureless spectrum remarkably well described by a blackbody (Drake et al (2002), Burwitz et al (2003)), absorption lines/features at E 0.2–2 keV have recently been detected from at least four sources, including 1E 1207.4-5209 (0.7 and 1.4 keV, possibly also 2.1, 2.8 keV; Sanwal et…”
- Cyclotron lines in highly magnetized neutron stars (2018, unknown): “The ROSAT PSPC spectrum could be modeled by pure blackbody emission and also the high-resolution Chandra LETG spectra did not reveal any significant deviations from a Planckian energy distribution (Burwitz et al. 2001, 2003).”