Thermal emission from low-field neutron stars

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  • 5 October 2001
Abstract
We present a new grid of LTE model atmospheres for weakly magnetic (B<=10e10G) neutron stars, using opacity and equation of state data from the OPAL project and employing a fully frequency and angle dependent radiation transfer. We discuss the differences to earlier models, including a comparison with a detailed NLTE calculation. As a first application of the new synthetic spectra, we re-analyze the available ROSAT PSPC data of the isolated neutron star candidate RXJ1856.5-3754. Our iron and solar abundance model spectra provide satisfactory fits to the X-ray spectrum and are consistent with the distance of RXJ1856.5-3754 recently measured by the Hubble Space Telescope, although pulse fractions as small as those observed are difficult to obtain for canonical neutron star radii.

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