Atmospheres and Spectra of Strongly Magnetized Neutron Stars II: Effect of Vacuum Polarization

Details Atmospheres and Spectra of Strongly Magnetized Neutron Stars II: Effect of Vacuum Polarization Atmospheres and Spectra of Strongly Magnetized Neutron Stars II: Effect of Vacuum Polarization

Apr 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002aps..apr.s7008h&link_type=abstract

American Physical Society, April Meeting, Jointly Sponsored with the High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) of the American As

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Scientific paper

We study the effect of vacuum polarization on the atmosphere structure and radiation spectra of neutron stars with surface magnetic fields B=10^14-10^15 G. Vacuum polarization modifies the dielectric property of the medium and gives rise to a resonance feature in the opacity; this feature is narrow and occurs at an energy that depends on the plasma density. Vacuum polarization can also induce resonant conversion of photon modes via a mechanism analogous to the MSW mechanism for neutrino oscillation. We construct atmosphere models in radiative equilibrium with an effective temperature of a few × 10^6 K by solving the full radiative transport equations for both polarization modes in a fully ionized hydrogen plasma. We show that vacuum polarization produces a broad depression in the X-ray flux at high energies, thus softening the tail (though this tail is still harder than a blackbody). We also show that the depression of continuum flux strongly reduces the equivalent width of the ion cyclotron line; this may explain the absence of line features in recent Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of several magnetar candidates.

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