New Optical/UV Counterparts, Astrometry and the Spectral Energy Distributions of Nearby, Thermally Emitting, Isolated Neutron Stars

Details New Optical/UV Counterparts, Astrometry and the Spectral Energy Distributions of Nearby, Thermally Emitting, Isolated Neutron Stars New Optical/UV Counterparts, Astrometry and the Spectral Energy Distributions of Nearby, Thermally Emitting, Isolated Neutron Stars

Sep 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011head...12.2601k&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, HEAD meeting #12, #26.01

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Seven of the nearby isolated neutron stars (INS) known till date show predominantly thermal spectrum with 106 K temperatures. Being relatively nearby and isolated makes them particularly attractive to constrain important NS properties such as mass, radius, cooling and possibly the equation of state of matter at ultra-high densities. However, interpreting their thermal spectra has turned out to be far more difficult than thought initially : The blackbody radius inferred from X-ray spectra, while ignoring optical/UV measurements, turns out to be too small to be a NS - even leading to immature speculations that the object might be a 'quark star'. Therefore, we carried out HST observations of these INSs to identify their optical/UV counterparts. We now have clearly identified optical and UV counterparts to all seven INSs. When compared to their X-ray spectra most of these sources appear to be brighter in optical/UV, in one case by a factor of 40 ! We find that the optical/UV SEDs show a range of slopes that are inconsistent with that expected from thermal (Rayleigh-Jeans) emission. We consider several explanations for this ranging from atmospheric effects, magnetospheric emission, and resonant scattering, but find that none is sufficient. These observations show that the puzzle of INSs, and possibly of all NSs, is far from over.
Support for this work was provided by NASA (HST award GO-11564.05), and NSF (under grants PHY 05-51164 and AST 07-07633).

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