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Thermal emission from Isolated Neutron Stars and their surface magnetic field: going quadrupolar?

Silvia Zane·Roberto Turolla
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Abstract

In the last few years considerable observational resources have been devoted to study the thermal emission from isolated neutron stars. Detailed XMM and Chandra observations revealed a number of features in the X-ray pulse profile, like asymmetry, energy dependence, and possible evolution of the pulse profile over a time scale of months or years. Here we show that these characteristics may be explained by a patchy surface temperature distribution, which is expected if the magnetic field has a complex structure in which higher order multipoles contribute together with the dipole. We reconsider these effects from a theoretical point of view, and discuss their implications to the observational properties of thermally emitting neutron stars.

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Silvia Zane, Roberto Turolla. 2005-01-06. Thermal emission from Isolated Neutron Stars and their surface magnetic field: going quadrupolar?. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2004.12.070

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