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Evolution of the Magnetic Field of a Neutron Star During Polar-Cap Accretion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

A. Melatos
Affiliation:
Department of Astronomy, 601 Campbell Hall, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley CA 94720USA
E. S. Phinney
Affiliation:
Theoretical Astrophysics, Mail Code 130–33, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena CA 91125USA

Extract

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Neutron stars that have experienced episodes of mass transfer exhibit lower magnetic dipole moments μ than other neutron stars, e.g. binary radio pulsars with high-mass (μ ∼ 1028G cm3) and low-mass (μ ∼ 1027G cm3) companions, isolated millisecond pulsars (μ ∼ 1026G cm3), and accreting objects in low-mass X-ray binaries (μ < 1027G cm3). Indeed, the μ-versus-orbital-period and μ-versus-age relations for low-mass and high-mass binaries imply that μ decreases monotonically with accreted mass Ma (Taam & van den Heuvel 1986; van den Heuvel & Bitzaraki 1995). Simple Ohmic field decay cannot be responsible given the existence of cold and therefore old white-dwarf companions (Kulkarni 1986). Alternative mechanisms include accretion-induced heating of the crust (Konar & Bhattacharya 1997) and fluxoid-vortex interactions in the stellar interior (Srinivasan et al. 1990).

Type
Part 9. Population and Neutron Star Properties
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2000

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