Thermal emission from Isolated Neutron Stars and their surface magnetic field: going quadrupolar?

Abstract

In the last few years considerable observational resources have been devoted to study the thermal emission from isolated neutron stars. Detailed XMM and Chandra observations revealed a number of features in the X-ray pulse profile, like asymmetry, energy dependence, and possible evolution of the pulse profile over a time scale of months or years. Here we show that these characteristics may be explained by a patchy surface temperature distribution, which is expected if the magnetic field has a complex structure in which higher order multipoles contribute together with the dipole. We reconsider these effects from a theoretical point of view, and discuss their implications to the observational properties of thermally emitting neutron stars.

6 pages, 1 TeX file, 6 postscript figures; macro: elsart.cls. Accepted for publication in Advances in Space Research. Manuscript Number: JASR-D-04-00405R1

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• Magnetic Fields of Neutron Stars
• Narrow phase-dependent features in X-ray Dim Isolated Neutron Stars: a new detection and upper limits
• Evidence for surface cooling emission in the XMM-Newton spectrum of the X-ray pulsar PSR B2334+61
• Accurate X-ray position and multiwavelength observations of the isolated neutron star RBS 1774