6,724 research outputs found
Radiation spectra and polarization in magnetar bursts
We present Monte Carlo simulations of radiative transfer in magnetar
atmospheres. We include the effects of vacuum polarization, electron and proton
scattering, and free-free absorption. Simulations are performed for the
atmosphere model with the magnetic field perpendicular and also tilted with
respect to the neutron star surface, and we show that the average spectrum does
not strongly depend on the orientation of the magnetic field. We investigate
the region of the parameter space where the vacuum absorption-like feature
appears in the spectrum and we analyze the shape of the proton cyclotron line.
Our results indicate that the existence of the vacuum polarization feature
should be a general attribute of soft gamma-ray repeaters burst spectra,
provided that the energy release takes place at the sufficiently dense region,
and the atmosphere scaleheight is large enough. We discuss the existence of
such a feature in recent observational data on these sources.Comment: submitted to Ap
Polarization of Thermal X-rays from Isolated Neutron Stars
Since the opacity of a magnetized plasma depends on polarization of
radiation, the radiation emergent from atmospheres of neutron stars with strong
magnetic fields is expected to be strongly polarized. The degree of linear
polarization, typically ~10-30%, depends on photon energy, effective
temperature and magnetic field. The spectrum of polarization is more sensitive
to the magnetic field than the spectrum of intensity. Both the degree of
polarization and the position angle vary with the neutron star rotation period
so that the shape of polarization pulse profiles depends on the orientation of
the rotational and magnetic axes. Moreover, as the polarization is
substantially modified by the general relativistic effects, observations of
polarization of X-ray radiation from isolated neutron stars provide a new
method for evaluating the mass-to-radius ratio of these objects, which is
particularly important for elucidating the properties of the superdense matter
in the neutron star interiors.Comment: 7 figures, to be published in Ap
Chandra observations of the old pulsar PSR B1451-68
We present 35 ks Chandra ACIS observations of the 42 Myr old radio pulsar PSR
B1451-68. A point source is detected 0.32" +/- 0.73" from the expected radio
pulsar position. It has ~200 counts in the 0.3-8 keV energy range. We identify
this point source as the X-ray counterpart of the radio pulsar. PSR B1451-68 is
located close to a 2MASS point source, for which we derive 7% as the upper
limit on the flux contribution to the measured pulsar X-ray flux. The pulsar
spectrum can be described by either a power-law model with photon index
Gamma=2.4 (+0.4/-0.3) and a unrealistically high absorbing column density N(H)=
(2.5 (+1.2/-1.3)) * 10^(21) cm^-2, or by a combination of a kT=0.35
(+0.12/-0.07) keV blackbody and a Gamma = 1.4 +/- 0.5 power-law component for
N(H)[DM]= 2.6 * 10^(20) cm^-2, estimated from the pulsar dispersion measure. At
the parallactic, Lutz-Kelker bias corrected distance of 480 pc, the non-thermal
X-ray luminosities in the 0.3-8 keV energy band are either Lx(nonth)= (11.3 +/-
1.7) * 10^(29) erg/s or Lx(nonth)= (5.9 (+4.9/-5.0)) * 10^(29) erg/s,
respectively. This corresponds to non-thermal X-ray efficiencies of either
eta(nonth)= Lx(nonth) / (dE/dt) ~ 0.005 or 0.003, respectively.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, accepted by Ap
Probing Axions with Radiation from Magnetic Stars
Recent experiments suggest that polarized photons may couple significantly to
pseudoscalar particles such as axions. We study the possible observational
signatures of axion-photon coupling for radiation from magnetic stars, with
particular focus on neutron stars. We present general methods for calculating
the axion-photon conversion probability during propagation through a varying
magnetized vacuum as well as across an inhomogeneous atmosphere. Partial
axion-photon conversion may take place in the vacuum region outside the neutron
star. Strong axion-photon mixing occurs due to a resonance in the atmosphere,
and depending on the axion coupling strength and other parameters, significant
axion-photon conversion can take place at the resonance. Such conversions may
produce observable effects on the radiation spectra and polarization signals
from the star. We also apply our results to axion-photon propagation in the Sun
and in magnetic white dwarfs. We find that there is no appreciable conversion
of solar axions to photons during the propagation.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures. Minor changes. PRD accepte
Nonthermal X-Rays from Supernova Remnant G330.2+1.0 and the Characteristics of its Central Compact Object
We present results from our X-ray data analysis of the SNR G330.2+1.0 and its
CCO, CXOU J160103.1--513353 (J1601). Using our XMM-Newton and Chandra
observations, we find that the X-ray spectrum of J1601 can be described by
neutron star atmosphere models (T ~ 2.5--3.7 MK). Assuming the distance of d ~
5 kpc for J1601 as estimated for SNR G330.2+1.0, a small emission region of R ~
1--2 km is implied. X-ray pulsations previously suggested by Chandra are not
confirmed by the XMM-Newton data, and are likely not real. However, our timing
analysis of the XMM-Newton data is limited by poor photon statistics, and thus
pulsations with a relatively low amplitude (i.e., an intrinsic pulsed-fraction
< 40%) cannot be ruled out. Our results indicate that J1601 is a CCO similar to
that in the Cassiopeia A SNR.X-ray emission from SNR G330.2+1.0 is dominated by
power law continuum (Gamma ~ 2.1--2.5) which primarily originates from thin
filaments along the boundary shell. This X-ray spectrum implies synchrotron
radiation from shock-accelerated electrons with an exponential roll-off
frequency ~ 2--3 x 10^17 Hz. For the measured widths of the X-ray filaments (D
~ 0.3 pc) and the estimated shock velocity (v_s ~ a few x 10^3 km s^-1), a
downstream magnetic field B ~ 10--50 G is derived. The estimated maximum
electron energy E_max ~ 27--38 TeV suggests that G330.2+1.0 is a candidate TeV
gamma-ray source. We detect faint thermal X-ray emission in G330.2+1.0. We
estimate a low preshock density n_0 ~ 0.1 cm^-3, which suggests a dominant
contribution from an inverse Compton mechanism (than the proton-proton
collision) to the prospective gamma-ray emission. Follow-up deep radio, X-ray,
and gamma-ray observations will be essential to reveal the details of the shock
parameters and the nature of particle accelerations in this SNR.Comment: 26 pages, 3 tables, 7 figures (4 color figures), Accepted by Ap
Atmospheres and Spectra of Strongly Magnetized Neutron Stars -- III. Partially Ionized Hydrogen Models
We construct partially ionized hydrogen atmosphere models for magnetized
neutron stars in radiative equilibrium with surface fields B=10^12-5 \times
10^14 G and effective temperatures T_eff \sim a few \times 10^5-10^6 K. These
models are based on the latest equation of state and opacity results for
magnetized, partially ionized hydrogen plasmas that take into account various
magnetic and dense medium effects. The atmospheres directly determine the
characteristics of thermal emission from isolated neutron stars. For the models
with B=10^12-10^13 G, the spectral features due to neutral atoms lie at extreme
UV and very soft X-ray energy bands and therefore are difficult to observe.
However, the continuum flux is also different from the fully ionized case,
especially at lower energies. For the superstrong field models (B\ga 10^14 G),
we show that the vacuum polarization effect not only suppresses the proton
cyclotron line as shown previously, but also suppresses spectral features due
to bound species; therefore spectral lines or features in thermal radiation are
more difficult to observe when the neutron star magnetic field is \ga 10^14 G.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures; ApJ, accepted (v599: Dec 20, 2003
Photon assisted tunneling in pairs of silicon donors
Shallow donors in silicon are favorable candidates for the implementation of solid-state quantum computer architectures because of the promising combination of atomiclike coherence properties and scalability from the semiconductor manufacturing industry. Quantum processing schemes require (among other things) controlled information transfer for readout. Here we demonstrate controlled electron tunneling at 10 K from P to Sb impurities and vice versa with the assistance of resonant terahertz photons
Soliton dual comb in crystalline microresonators
We present a novel compact dual-comb source based on a monolithic optical
crystalline MgF multi-resonator stack. The coherent soliton combs generated
in two microresonators of the stack with the repetition rate of 12.1 GHz and
difference of 1.62 MHz provided after heterodyning a 300 MHz wide
radio-frequency comb. Analogous system can be used for dual-comb spectroscopy,
coherent LIDAR applications and massively parallel optical communications.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
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