Geminga: A Cooling Superfluid Neutron Star

Abstract

We show that Geminga's surface temperature can be understood by both types of neutrino cooling scenarios, i.e, slow neutrino cooling by the modified Urca process or fast neutrino cooling by the direct Urca process or by some exotic matter, and thus does not allow us to discriminate between these two competing schemes. However, for both types of scenarios, agreement with the observed temperature can only be obtained if BARYON PAIRING IS PRESENT IN MOST, IF NOT ALL, OF THE CORE OF THE STAR. We also comment on the recent temperature estimates for PSR 0656+14 and PSR 1055-52, which pertain to the same photon cooling era. We argue though that observational evidence for the slow neutrino cooling model (the ``standard'' model) is in fact very dim and that the interpretation of the surface temperature of all neutron stars could be done with a reasonable theoretical a priori within the fast neutrino cooling scenarios only. In this case, Geminga, PSR 0656+14, and PSR 1055-52 all show evidence of baryon pairing down to their very centers. xxx----To be published in Ap.J. (June 10 isue).---xxx