Joule heating in high magnetic field pulsars

Abstract

We study the efficiency of Joule heating in the crustal layers of young neutron stars. It is shown that dissipation of the magnetic field is highly inhomogeneous in the crust with much faster dissipation in relatively low density layers. In young neutron stars, the rate of Joule heating in the crust can exceed the standard luminosity of non-magnetic star and can even be comparable to the luminosity of magnetars. The results of calculations are compared with the available observational data. We argue that the crustal field model can well account for the data on the surface temperature and magnetic field of young neutron stars.

8 pages, 5 figures; accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysics

References in corpus (5)

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• Magnetars as cooling neutron stars with internal heating
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