A Study of Low-Temperature Neutron Star Atmospheres. (September 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Calder, A C; Karpov, P I; Medin, Z; Lattimer, J M
• Is Part Of: Journal of physics. Volume 1623(2020)
• Publication Date: 2020-09
• Subjects: Physics -- Congresses; 530.5
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/1623/1/012003
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1742-6588

Abstract

Abstract: We present a study of how a low-temperature accreted atmosphere influences the emitted X-ray spectrum of a neutron star. The atmosphere models and spectra were computed with Zcode, a multigroup radiation transfer code developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Though the underlying hot neutron star behaves as a blackbody, the atmosphere shifts the peak of spectrum away from a blackbody and toward higher energies, producing an emitted spectrum similar to a dilute blackbody. Quantifying the effects of this atmosphere will remove a source of uncertainty in X-ray observations and better constrain the mass-radius relation for neutron stars and thus the equation of state of dense matter. We present a suite of these atmospheres with varying compositions and temperatures as well as the resulting spectra.