Herschel and Spitzer Observations of Slowly Rotating, Nearby Isolated Neutron Starsстатья
Статья опубликована в высокорейтинговом журнале
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Статья опубликована в журнале из списка Web of Science и/или Scopus
Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 5 декабря 2014 г.
Аннотация:Supernova fallback disks around neutron stars have been suspected to influence the evolution of the diverse neutron star populations. Slowly rotating neutron stars are the most promising places to find such disks. Searching for the cold and warm debris of old fallback disks, we carried out Herschel PACS (70В Ојm, 160В Ојm) and Spitzer IRAC (3.6В Ојm, 4.5В Ојm) observations of eight slowly rotating ( P IMG [http://ej.iop.org/icons/Entities/ap.gif] ≈ 3-11В s) nearby (<1В kpc) isolated neutron stars. Herschel detected 160В Ојm emission (>5Пѓ) at locations consistent with the positions of the neutron stars RXВ J0806.4-4123 and RXВ J2143.0+0654. No other significant infrared emission was detected from the eight neutron stars. We estimate probabilities of 63%, 33%, and 3% that, respectively, none, one, or both Herschel PACS 160В Ојm detections are unrelated excess sources due to background source confusion or an interstellar cirrus. If the 160В Ојm emission is indeed related to cold (10-22В K) dust around the neutron stars, this dust is absorbing and re-emitting 10% to 20% of the neutron stars’ X-rays. Such high efficiencies would be at least three orders of magnitude larger than the efficiencies of debris disks around nondegenerate stars. While thin dusty disks around the neutron stars can be excluded as counterparts of the 160В Ојm emission, dusty asteroid belts constitute a viable option.