The Masses of Isolated Neutron Stars Inferred from the Gravitational Redshift Measurements

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to estimate the masses of isolated neutron stars using gravitational redshift measurements, filling a gap in neutron star mass data and supporting the consistency of their masses with binary systems.

Contribution

The work introduces a novel approach to infer isolated neutron star masses from gravitational redshift data, leveraging recent constraints on neutron star equations of state.

Findings

Estimated masses of three isolated neutron stars are around 1.2 solar masses.

The inferred masses are consistent with those of neutron stars in binary systems.

Results suggest no significant accretion has occurred in these isolated neutron stars.

Abstract

For some neutron stars (NSs) in the binary systems, the masses have been accurately measured. While for the isolated neutron stars (INSs), no mass measurement has been reported yet. The situation will change soon thanks to the successful performance of the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), with which the radius and mass of the isolated PSR J0030+0451 can be simultaneously measured. For most INSs, no mass measurements are possible for NICER because of observational limitations. Benefiting from recent significant progress made on constraining the equation of state of NSs, in this work we propose a way to estimate the masses of the INSs with the measured gravitational redshifts. We apply our method to RX J1856.5-3754, RX J0720.4-3125, and RBS 1223, three members of "The Magnificent Seven" (M7), and estimate their masses to be $1.24_{-0.29}^{+0.29}M_{\odot}$, $1.23_{-0.05}^{+0.10}M_{\odot}$, and $1.08_{-0.11}^{+0.20}M_{\odot}$, respectively. These masses are consistent with that of binary NS systems, suggesting no evidence for experiencing significant accretion of these isolated objects.