Further constraints on neutron star crustal properties in the low-mass X-ray binary 1RXS J180408.9$-$342058

TL;DR

This study observes the cooling of a neutron star crust in a low-mass X-ray binary after an outburst, revealing the need for shallow heating and an additional spectral component to explain the thermal evolution.

Contribution

It provides new observational data and modeling that constrain the thermal properties and heating mechanisms of neutron star crusts in low-mass X-ray binaries.

Findings

Crust cooled from 100 eV to 73 eV within 479 days post-outburst

Crust returned to thermal equilibrium with the core by 860 days

A shallow heat source of about 0.9 MeV per nucleon is required in models

Abstract

We report on two new quiescent {\it XMM-Newton} observations (in addition to the earlier {\it Swift}/XRT and {\it XMM-Newton} coverage) of the cooling neutron star crust in the low-mass X-ray binary 1RXS J180408.9$-$342058. Its crust was heated during the $\sim$4.5 month accretion outburst of the source. From our quiescent observations, fitting the spectra with a neutron star atmosphere model, we found that the crust had cooled from $\sim$ 100 eV to $\sim$73 eV from $\sim$8 days to $\sim$479 days after the end of its outburst. However, during the most recent observation, taken $\sim$860 days after the end of the outburst, we found that the crust appeared not to have cooled further. This suggested that the crust had returned to thermal equilibrium with the neutron star core. We model the quiescent thermal evolution with the theoretical crustal cooling code NSCool and find that the source requires a shallow heat source, in addition to the standard deep crustal heating processes, contributing $\sim$0.9 MeV per accreted nucleon during outburst to explain its observed temperature decay. Our high quality {\it XMM-Newton} data required an additional hard component to adequately fit the spectra. This slightly complicates our interpretation of the quiescent data of 1RXS J180408.9$-$342058. The origin of this component is not fully understood.