2001/02/02 by Andrea Possenti, Possenti, Andrea, Monica Colpi +6
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0102047
5 pages, 3 embedded figures, latex style included. To appear in "Evolution of Binary and Multiple Stars", 2001, eds. Ph. Podsiadlowski, S. Rappaport, A. R. King, F. D'Antona & L. Burderi (San Francisco: ASP)
arxiv created 2001/02/02 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We explore, using an exact cooling code, the thermal evolution of a neutron star undergoing episodes of intense accretion, alternated by long periods of quiescence (e.g. Soft X-Ray Transients). We find that the soft component of the quiescent luminosity of Aql X-1, 4U 1608-522 and of SAX J1808.4-3658 can be understood as thermal emission from a cooling neutron star with negligible neutrino emission. In the case of Cen X-4 strong neutrino emission from the inner core is necessary to explain the observation: this may indicate that the neutron star of Cen X-4 is heavier than 1.4 Msun. This study opens the possibility of using the quiescent emission of Soft X-Ray Transients as a tool for probing the core superfluidity in relation to the mass of the neutron star.