Born-Infeld magnetars: larger than classical toroidal magnetic fields and implications for gravitational-wave astronomy

Magnetars are neutron stars presenting bursts and outbursts of X- and soft-gamma rays that can be understood with the presence of very large magnetic fields. Thus, nonlinear electrodynamics should be taken into account for a more accurate description of such compact systems. We study that in the context of ideal magnetohydrodynamics and make a realization of our analysis to the case of the well-known Born-Infeld (BI) electromagnetism in order to come up with some of its astrophysical consequences. We focus here on toroidal magnetic fields as motivated by already known magnetars with low dipolar magnetic fields and their expected relevance in highly magnetized stars. We show that BI electrodynamics leads to larger toroidal magnetic fields when compared to Maxwell's electrodynamics. Hence, one should expect higher production of gravitational waves (GWs) and even more energetic giant flares from nonlinear stars. Given current constraints on BI's scale field, giant flare energetics and magnetic fields in magnetars, we also find that the maximum magnitude of magnetar ellipticities should be $10^{-6}-10^{-5}$. Besides, BI electrodynamics may lead to a maximum increase of order $10\%-20\%$ of the GW energy radiated from a magnetar when compared to Maxwell's, while much larger percentages may arise for other physically motivated scenarios. Thus, nonlinear theories of the electromagnetism might also be probed in the near future with the improvement of GW detectors.Comment: 8 pages, no figures, accepted for publication in The European Physical Journal C (EPJC

Gravitational waves from pulsars with measured braking index

We study the putative emission of gravitational waves (GWs) in particular for pulsars with measured braking index. We show that the appropriate combination of both GW emission and magnetic dipole brakes can naturally explain the measured braking index, when the surface magnetic field and the angle between the magnetic dipole and rotation axes are time dependent. Then we discuss the detectability of these very pulsars by aLIGO and the Einstein Telescope. We call attention to the realistic possibility that aLIGO can detect the GWs generated by at least some of these pulsars, such as Vela, for example.Comment: 6 pages and 4 figure

Fermionic matter under the effects of high magnetic fields and its consequences in white dwarfs

We investigate a recently proposed effect of strong magnetic fields in Fermionicmatter that is important to the structure of magnetic white dwarfs. This work is highly relevant in view of the recent observations of magnetized white dwarfs (B ~ 108-9 G), and possible candidates for white dwarfs pulsars as an alternative descriptions for SGRs and AXPs. Here, we consider the matter inside white dwarfs composed by ions surrounded by an electron degenerate Fermi gas subject to a strong magnetic field. We investigate the effect of the Landau levels due to the huge magnetic field on the equation of state (EoS). We see that the behaviour of the equation of state as a function of the mass and energy density is much stiffer when only one Landau level is occupied. We also investigate the regime of lower magnetic fields where many Landau levels are occupied

On the nature of some SGRs and AXPs as rotation-powered neutron stars

We investigate the possibility that some SGRs/AXPs could be canonical rotation-powered pulsars using realistic NS structure parameters instead of fiducial values. We show that realistic NS parameters lowers the estimated value of the magnetic field and radiation efficiency, $L_X/\dot{E}_{\rm rot}$, with respect to estimates based on fiducial NS parameters. We show that nine SGRs/AXPs can be described as canonical pulsars driven by the NS rotational energy, for $L_X$ computed in the soft (2--10~keV) X-ray band. We compute the range of NS masses for which $L_X/\dot{E}_{\rm rot}<1$. We discuss the observed hard X-ray emission in three sources of the group of nine potentially rotation-powered NSs. This additional hard X-ray component dominates over the soft one leading to $L_X/\dot{E}_{\rm rot}>1$ in two of them. We show that 9 SGRs/AXPs can be rotation-powered NSs if we analyze their X-ray luminosity in the soft 2--10~keV band. Interestingly, four of them show radio emission and six have been associated with supernova remnants (including Swift J1834.9-0846 the first SGR observed with a surrounding wind nebula). These observations give additional support to our results of a natural explanation of these sources in terms of ordinary pulsars. Including the hard X-ray emission observed in three sources of the group of potential rotation-powered NSs, this number of sources with $L_X/\dot{E}_{\rm rot}<1$ becomes seven. It remains open to verification 1) the accuracy of the estimated distances and 2) the possible contribution of the associated supernova remnants to the hard X-ray emission.Comment: 11 pages, 14 figures, to appear in A&

Mass limits of the extremely fast-spinning white dwarf CTCV J2056-3014

CTCV J2056--3014 is a nearby cataclysmic variable with an orbital period of approximately $1.76$ hours at a distance of about $853$ light-years from the Earth. Its recently reported X-ray properties suggest that J2056-3014 is an unusual accretion-powered intermediate polar that harbors a fast-spinning white dwarf (WD) with a spin period of $29.6$ s. The low X-ray luminosity and the relatively modest accretion rate per unit area suggest that the shock is not occurring near the WD surface. It has been argued that, under these conditions, the maximum temperature of the shock cannot be directly used to determine the mass of the WD (which, under the abovementioned assumptions, would be around $0.46$ $M_\odot$). Here, we explore the stability of this rapidly rotating WD using a modern equation of state (EoS) that accounts for electron--ion, electron--electron, and ion--ion interactions. For this EoS, we determine the mass density thresholds for the onset of pycnonuclear fusion reactions and study the impact of microscopic stability and rapid rotation on the structure and stability of WDs, considering them with helium, carbon, oxygen, and neon. From this analysis, we obtain a minimum mass for CTCV J2056--3014 of $0.56~M_\odot$ and a maximum mass of around $1.38~M_\odot$. If the mass of CTCV J2056--3014 is close to the lower mass limit, its equatorial radius would be on the order of $10^4$~km due to rapid rotation. Such a radius is significantly larger than that of a nonrotating WD of average mass ($0.6\, M_\odot$), which is on the order of $7\times 10^3$~km. The effects on the minimum mass of J2056-3014 due to changes in the temperature and composition of the stellar matter were found to be negligibly small.Comment: 5 pages, 3 Figures, 2 Tables. Accepted for publication in A&