Monte-Carlo simulations of thermal/nonthermal radiation from a neutron-star magnetospheric accretion shell

Abstract

We discuss the space-and-time-dependent Monte Carlo code we have developed to simulate the relativistic radiation output from compact astrophysical objects, coupled to a Fokker-Planck code to determine the self-consistent lepton populations. We have applied this code to model the emission from a magnetized neutron star accretion shell near the Alfven radius, reprocessing the radiation from the neutron sar surface. We explore the parameter space defined by the accretion rate, stellar surface field and the level of wave turbulence in the shell. Our results are relevant to the emission from atoll sources, soft-X-ray transient X-ray binaries containing weakly magnetized neutron stars, and to recently suggested models of accretion-powered emission from anomalous X-ray pulsars.

24 pages, including 7 figures; uses epsf.sty. final version, accepted for publication in ApJ. Extended introduction and discussion

References in corpus (2)

• An Accretion Model for Anomalous X-Ray Pulsars
• The Spin Period, Luminosity and Age Distributions of Anomalous X-Ray Pulsars

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