Cooling of neutron stars with diffusive envelopes

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the chemical composition of neutron star envelopes affects their thermal insulation and cooling behavior, using new binary ion mixture models to improve understanding of neutron star cooling processes.

Contribution

It introduces novel models of neutron star envelopes with binary ion mixtures, enhancing the accuracy of thermal conductivity and cooling simulations compared to standard models.

Findings

Chemical composition significantly impacts thermal insulation.

Uncertainties in envelope composition complicate internal structure inference.

Models applied to Vela pulsar and 0.1-1 Myr neutron stars.

Abstract

We study the effects of heat blanketing envelopes of neutron stars on their cooling. To this aim, we perform cooling simulations using newly constructed models of the envelopes composed of binary ion mixtures (H--He, He--C, C--Fe) varying the mass of lighter ions (H, He or C) in the envelope. The results are compared with those calculated using the standard models of the envelopes which contain the layers of lighter (accreted) elements (H, He and C) on top of the Fe layer, varying the mass of accreted elements. The main effect is that the chemical composition of the envelopes influences their thermal conductivity and, hence, thermal insulation of the star. For illustration, we apply these results to estimate the internal temperature of the Vela pulsar and to study the cooling of neutron stars of ages of 0.1 - 1 Myr at the photon cooling stage. The uncertainties of the cooling models associated with our poor knowledge of chemical composition of the heat insulating envelopes strongly complicate theoretical reconstruction of the internal structure of cooling neutron stars from observations of their thermal surface emission.