A Firm Upper Limit to the Radius of the Neutron Star in SAX J1808.4-3658

Abstract

We show that observations of X-ray pulsing from SAX J1808.4-3658 place a firm upper limit of 13.8 m^{1/3} km on the radius of the neutron star, where m is its mass in solar units. The limit is independent of distance or assumptions about the magnetospheric geometry, and could be significantly tightened by observations of the pulsations in the near future. We discuss the implications for the equation of state and the possible neutron star mass.

(7 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters)

References in corpus (2)

• Supernova Kicks, Magnetic Braking, and Neutron-Star Binaries
• The Formation of Low-Mass Transient X-Ray Binaries

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