Cas A cooling

The authors survey the various cooling neutron stars that have been observed including that in Cas-A and compare them with a variety of models to constrain the neutron stars within!

arXiv:1010.1154 [pdf, ps, other] Title: Cooling rates of neutron stars and the young neutron star in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant

Ambipolar diffusion

Ambipolar diffusion is often invoked in magnetars to account for the energy released by these objects.  Ambipolar diffusion abets the delay of the strong magnetic field within the star whose energy can then power the quiescent and burst emission.   The authors argue that ambipolar diffusion is strongly depressed by superfluidity.  The typical ambipolar diffusion is non-solenoidal.  This means that the density of the material changes as the field evolves; therefore, weak reactions occur to reestablish the equilibria.  These weak reactions are suppressed by superconductivity because pairs must be broken and reformed to convert protons to neutron and vice versa.

arXiv:1010.1153 [pdf, ps, other]
Title: Ambipolar diffusion in superfluid neutron stars

Understanding the RRATs

The high magnetic field pulsar PSR J1119-6127 shows a double-pulse profiles and RRAT-like emission after glitches.  Otherwise, it looks like a normal pulsar.  The RRAT-like emission appears as single pulses outside of the main pulse.  Also the RRAT-like pulses move around in phase so these strong pulses don't show periodicity over the short integration span.

arXiv:1010.0857 [pdf, ps, other]

Title: The glitch-induced identity changes of PSR J1119-6127

How Do Pulsars Get Their Kicks?

Nordhaus et al. perform numerical calculations in which the neutron star forms a couple of kilometers away from the center of the star.   They also have to augment the neutrino luminosity to successfully drive the supernova.   With the proto neutron star off-center, the neutron star naturally gets a velocity kick of 150 km/s and growing at 350 km/s/s by the end of simulation.    It is nice that one's intuition and more rudimentary numerical models are verified by this thorough calculation.

arXiv:1010.0674 [pdf, other]

Title: Theoretical Support for the Hydrodynamic Mechanism of Pulsar Kicks


arXiv:1010.0167
Hydrodynamical Neutron Star Kicks in Three Dimensions

Quantum Vacuum Friction

Dupays et al. have argued in many papers that the magnetization of the vacuum surrounding a neutron star and cause it to spin down more quickly than magnetic dipole emission especially for long spin periods.  The gist of this paper is to argue that the objects that we inferred are magnetars from their values of P and P-dot are actually older analogues to regular radio pulsars but with longer periods of QVF dominates the spin down.   It is a cute argument but it does not address the strange behaviour of the objects that we call magnetars.  This behaviour provides additional support for the magnetar model because the strong B-fields can account for it.   The whole quantum vacuum friction idea seems a bit dodgy too, but I cannot succinctly  explain what is wrong with it.


http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.0597 Quantum Vacuum influence on the evolution of Pulsars

Making pulsars and magnetars

Popov et al. outline the most comprehensive simulations of the production of neutron stars as a function of magnetic field, so far.  They include field decay, accretion, spin evolution and other effects to account for the Log N-Log S relation of pulsars as well as the Log N-Log L relation for magnetars.   I look forward to see an more thorough description of their results than this conference proceeeding.

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/1009.5888 Extensive population synthesis of isolated neutron stars with field decay

Two Bangs for Your Supernova

If the transition to quark matter from neutron matter is strongly first order, a forming quark star will emit to neutrino blasts, one from the newborn neutron star and one from the subsequently formed quark star.  The author argue that the pair of neutrino bursts will be observable with today's neutrino telescopes.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.6096 Can a supernova bang twice?