2011/05/10 by M. Coleman Miller, Miller, M. Coleman, Stratos Boutloukos +5
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1105.2030
Talk presented at Champery, Switzerland on 9 February 2011. To appear in Proceedings of Science
openalex publication_date 2011/05/10 · arxiv created 2011/06/27 · arxiv updated 2011/06/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
X-ray burst spectra have long been used to estimate neutron star masses and radii. These estimates assumed that burst spectra are accurately described by the model atmosphere spectra developed over the last three decades. We compared RXTE data from a superburst with these spectra and found that the spectra predicted by previously published model atmospheres are strongly inconsistent with these high-precision measurements. In contrast, a simple Bose-Einstein spectrum is fully consistent with the data, as are recently published model atmosphere spectra. We discuss the implications of our results for determinations of neutron star masses and radii via constraints on their surface gravity and redshift, as originally suggested by Majczyna and Madej.