Two-blackbody portraits of radiation from magnetized neutron stars

Abstract

We study a simple model describing thermal radiation spectra from magnetized neutron stars. The model assumes that a star is nearly spherical and isothermal inside and possesses dipole magnetic fields ($B \lesssim 10^{14}$ G) near the surface, which make the surface temperature distribution non--uniform. We assume further that any surface element emits a blackbody (BB) spectrum with a local effective temperature. We show that such thermal spectra (including phase--resolved) are accurately approximated by simple equivalent two--BB (2BB) models. We introduce and study phase--space maps of 2BB parameters and show that these maps can be useful for interpreting neutron star observations, in which 2BB spectral fits have been done.