Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Scientific paper
2002-06-18
Phys.Rev. D66 (2002) 084025
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
7 pages; submitted to PRD; only minor revisions
Scientific paper
10.1103/PhysRevD.66.084025
We show that NS's with large toroidal B-fields tend naturally to evolve into potent gravitational-wave (gw) emitters. The toroidal field B_t tends to distort the NS into a prolate shape, and this magnetic distortion can easily dominate over the oblateness ``frozen into'' the NS crust. An elastic NS with frozen-in B-field of this magnitude is clearly secularly unstable: the wobble angle between the NS's angular momentum J^i and the star's magnetic axis n_B^i grow on a dissipation timescale until J^i and n_B^i are orthogonal. This final orientation is clearly the optimal one for gravitational-wave (gw) emission. The basic cause of the instability is quite general, so we conjecture that the same final state is reached for a realistic NS. Assuming this, we show that for LMXB's with B_t of order 10^{13}G, the spindown from gw's is sufficient to balance the accretion torque--supporting a suggestion by Bildsten. The spindown rates of most millisecond pulsars can also be attributed to gw emission sourced by toroidal B-fields, and both these sources could be observed by LIGO II. While the first-year spindown of a newborn NS is most likely dominated by em processes, reasonable values of B_t and the (external) dipolar field B_d can lead to detectable levels of gw emission, for a newborn NS in our own galaxy.
No associations
LandOfFree
Gravitational Waves from Neutron Stars with Large Toroidal B-fields does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Gravitational Waves from Neutron Stars with Large Toroidal B-fields, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Gravitational Waves from Neutron Stars with Large Toroidal B-fields will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-366567