Neutron Star Planets: Atmospheric processes and habitability
arXiv:1705.07688 · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201731102
Abstract
Of the roughly 3000 neutron stars known, only a handful have sub-stellar companions. The most famous of these are the low-mass planets around the millisecond pulsar B1257+12. New evidence indicates that observational biases could still hide a wide variety of planetary systems around most neutron stars. We consider the environment and physical processes relevant to neutron star planets, in particular the effect of X-ray irradiation and the relativistic pulsar wind on the planetary atmosphere. We discuss the survival time of planet atmospheres and the planetary surface conditions around different classes of neutron stars, and define a neutron star habitable zone. Depending on as-yet poorly constrained aspects of the pulsar wind, both Super-Earths around B1257+12 could lie within its habitable zone.
arXiv commentSubmitted to A&A
References in corpus (37)
- Rapid planetesimal formation in turbulent circumstellar discs
- Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler, III: Analysis of the First 16 Months of Data
- Nucleosynthesis in Massive Stars With Improved Nuclear and Stellar Physics
- Galactic chemical evolution: Carbon through Zinc
- The Second Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog of Gamma-ray Pulsars
- A "kilonova" associated with short-duration gamma-ray burst 130603B
- Nucleosynthesis Yields of Core-Collapse Supernovae and Hypernovae, and Galactic Chemical Evolution
- Habitable planets around the star Gl 581?
- The Role of Core Mass in Controlling Evaporation: the Kepler Radius Distribution and the Kepler-36 Density Dichotomy
- The Cooling of Compact Stars
- A Debris Disk Around An Isolated Young Neutron Star
- A Young White Dwarf Companion to Pulsar 1620-26: Evidence for Early Planet Formation
- Core-Collapse Simulations of Rotating Stars
- Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler IV: Planet Sample From Q1-Q8 (22 Months)
- Ranges of Atmospheric Mass and Composition of Super Earth Exoplanets
- Transformation of a Star into a Planet in a Millisecond Pulsar Binary
- Electrodynamics of axisymmetric pulsar magnetosphere with electron-positron discharge: a numerical experiment
- HST Observations of Heavy Elements in Metal-Poor Galactic Halo Stars
- Fast Radio Bursts: Collisions between Neutron Stars and Asteroids/Comets
- Mass-loss rates for transiting exoplanets
- Transit surveys for Earths in the habitable zones of white dwarfs
- Exploring the Habitable Zone for Kepler planetary candidates
- Habitable Planets Around White and Brown Dwarfs: The Perils of a Cooling Primary
- An Asteroid Belt Interpretation for the Timing Variations of the Millisecond Pulsar B1937+21
- Ab-initio pulsar magnetosphere: the role of general relativity
- Transport of Ionizing Radiation in Terrestrial-like Exoplanet Atmospheres
- Three-dimensional Analytical Description of Magnetised Winds from Oblique Pulsars
- A minor body falling onto a neutron star as an explanation for the unusual gamma-ray burst GRB 101225A
- A Mid-Infrared Counterpart to the Magnetar 1E 2259+586
- Evidence of an asteroid encountering a pulsar
- The Evolution of Protoplanetary Disks Around Millisecond Pulsars: The PSR 1257 +12 System
- Bondi-Hoyle Accretion onto Magnetized Neutron Star
- Why are pulsar planets rare?
- The Pulsar Planets: A Test Case of Terrestrial Planet Assembly
- Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton Accretion Model for Low-luminosity X-ray Sources in Globular Clusters
- X-ray emission from the planet pulsar B1257+12
- Settling accretion on to isolated neutron stars from interstellar medium
Cited by in corpus (9)
- Microlensing events indicate that super-Earth exoplanets are common in Jupiter-like orbits
- Close-in Exoplanets as Candidates of Strange Quark Matter Objects
- Eta-Earth Revisited II: Deriving a Maximum Number of Earth-like Habitats in the Galactic Disk
- Chiral Selection, Isotopic Abundance Shifts, and Autocatalysis of Meteoritic Amino Acids
- Future Exoplanet Research: Science Questions and How to Address Them
- Planetary magnetosphere evolution around post-main-sequence stars
- The impact of classical and General Relativistic obliquity precessions on the habitability of circumstellar neutron stars' planets
- Search of nearby resolved neutron stars among optical sources
- Searching for Exotrojans in Pulsar Systems