arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Daniele Viganò.
Central Compact Objects are peculiar young neutron stars, with very low external magnetic fields combined with high fluxes in the X-ray band and surface temperature anisotropies. However, in their crust the magnetic field can be strong, result of its burial during a short post-supernova hypercritical accretion episode. The implications of this latter scenario for the temperature anisotropy, pulsed fraction and luminosity are discussed.
CCOs are X-ray sources lying close the center of supernova remnants, with inferred values of the surface magnetic fields significantly lower (less than about 1e11 G) than those of standard pulsars. In this paper, we revise the hidden magnetic field scenario, presenting the first 2D simulations of the submergence and reemergence of the magnetic field in the crust of a neutron star. A post-supernova accretion stage of about 1e-4-1e-3 solar masses over a vast region of the surface is required to bury the magnetic field into the inner crust. When accretion stops, the field reemerges on a typical timescale of 1-100 kyr, depending on the submergence conditions. After this stage, the surface magnetic field is restored close to its birth values. A possible observable consequence of the hidden magnetic field is the anisotropy of the surface temperature distribution, in agreement with observations of several of these sources. We conclude that the hidden magnetic field model is viable as alternative to the anti-magnetar scenario, and it could provide the missing link between CCOs and the other classes of isolated neutron stars.
Over the past decade, the numerical modeling of the magnetic field evolution in astrophysical scenarios has become an increasingly important field. In the crystallized crust of neutron stars the evolution of the magnetic field is governed by the Hall induction equation. In this equation the relative contribution of the two terms (Hall term and Ohmic dissipation) varies depending on the local conditions of temperature and magnetic field strength. This results in the transition from the purely parabolic character of the equations to the hyperbolic regime as the magnetic Reynolds number increases, which presents severe numerical problems. Up to now, most attempts to study this problem were based on spectral methods, but they failed in representing the transition to large magnetic Reynolds numbers. We present a new code based on upwind finite differences techniques that can handle situations with arbitrary low magnetic diffusivity and it is suitable for studying the formation of sharp current sheets during the evolution. The code is thoroughly tested in different limits and used to illustrate the evolution of the crustal magnetic field in a neutron star in some representative cases. Our code, coupled to cooling codes, can be used to perform long-term simulations of the magneto-thermal evolution of neutron stars.
The X-ray spectra observed in the persistent emission of magnetars are evidence for the existence of a magnetosphere. The high-energy part of the spectra is explained by resonant cyclotron upscattering of soft thermal photons in a twisted magnetosphere, which has motivated an increasing number of efforts to improve and generalize existing magnetosphere models. We want to build more general configurations of twisted, force-free magnetospheres as a first step to understanding the role played by the magnetic field geometry in the observed spectra. First we reviewed and extended previous analytical works to assess the viability and limitations of semi-analytical approaches. Second, we built a numerical code able to relax an initial configuration of a nonrotating magnetosphere to a force-free geometry, provided any arbitrary form of the magnetic field at the star surface. The numerical code is based on a finite-difference time-domain, divergence-free, and conservative scheme, based of the magneto-frictional method used in other scenarios. We obtain new numerical configurations of twisted magnetospheres, with distributions of twist and currents that differ from previous analytical solutions. The range of global twist of the new family of solutions is similar to the existing semi-analytical models (up to some radians), but the achieved geometry may be quite different. The geometry of twisted, force-free magnetospheres shows a wider variety of possibilities than previously considered. This has implications for the observed spectra and opens the possibility of implementing alternative models in simulations of radiative transfer aiming at providing spectra to be compared with observations.