Crust Cooling of Soft X-Ray Transients——the Uncertainties of Shallow Heating

Crust cooling of soft X-ray transients has been observed after outbursts,but an additional shallow heating during accretion in outburst is needed to explain the quiescent light curve.However,shallow heating is significantly different between sources and even within one source between different outbursts,and the source of shallow heat is as yet unknown.Using the open source code"dStar"which solves the fully general relativistic heat diffusion equation for the crust,we investigate the effect of magnitude and depth of shallow heating on crust cooling and find that some exceptional sources(Swift J174805.3-244637,MAXI J0556-332 during outburstⅡand GRO J1750-27)in which shallow heating may be inactive could be explained by a deeper shallow heating mechanism.We compare our results with those from previous works and find that the shallow heating is model dependent.In addition,the effects of mass and radius of a neutron star on shallow heating are studied,and it is shown that the more compact the star,the less shallow heating will be needed to fit the crust cooling light curves.

Meta-analysis of electron cyclotron resonance absorption features detected in high-mass X-ray binaries

Using recent compilations of detailed X-ray observations and spectral models of exceptional quality, we record the electron cyclotron resonance absorption(ECRA) features that have been detected in 45 pulsating high-mass X-ray binaries(HMXBs) and ultraluminous X-ray(ULX) sources harboring neutron stars, although seven of these detections are still questionable and another 21 are single and/or not independently confirmed. From the comprehensive catalogs of Jaisawal & Naik and Staubert et al.and from several additional recent observations, we produce two lists of HMXB ECRA sources: a list of 17 sources in which multiple ECRA lines or single very low-energy lines are seen, in which we can reasonably assume that the lowest energy reveals the fundamental cyclotron level for each source;and a"contaminated" list of 38 sources including the 21 detections of single ECRA lines that may(not) be higherlevel harmonics. Both lists confirm a previous result that we have obtained independently by modeling the propeller lines of Magellanic HMXB pulsars: the surface dipolar magnetic fields B*of HMXB neutron stars are segregated around five distinct values with B*= 0.28 ± 0.08, 0.55 ± 0.11, 1.3 ± 0.37, 3.0 ± 0.68 and 7.9 ± 3.1, in units of TG. However, an explanation of this phenomenon is currently lacking. We have found no correlation between these B*values and the corresponding observed spin periods, spin period derivatives, orbital periods, maximum X-ray luminosities, neutron star masses or companion star masses.

Accretion by a Neutron Star Moving at a High Kick Velocity in the Supernova Ejecta

We suggest a two-dimensional time dependent analytic model to describe the accretion of matter onto a neutron star moving at a high speed across the ejecta left in the aftermath of a supernova explosion. The formation of a strange star resulting from the accretion is also addressed. The newborn neutron star is assumed to move outward at a kick velocity of Vns- 10^3 kin s^-1, and the accretion flow is treated as a dust flow. When the neutron star travels across the ejecta with high speed, it sweeps up material, and when the accreted mass has reached a critical value, the neutron star will undergo a phase transition, for instance, to become a strange star. Our results show that the accretion rate decreases in a complicated way in time, not just a power law dependence： it drops much faster than the power law derived by Colpi et al. We also found that the total accreted mass and the phase transition of the neutron star depend sensitively on the velocity of supernova ejecta.