Spin precession of binary neutron stars with magnetic dipole moments

TL;DR

This paper derives and analyzes the effects of magnetic dipole interactions on the spin precession of binary neutron stars, revealing that strong magnetic fields can significantly influence their long-term spin dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analytical framework for magnetic dipole interactions in binary neutron stars and demonstrates their impact on spin evolution.

Findings

Magnetic dipole interactions can alter spin precession over long timescales.

Strong magnetic fields in neutron stars influence their spin dynamics.

The study provides a dimensionless parameter to quantify magnetic field effects.

Abstract

Spin precession equations including the spin-orbit (SO), spin-spin (SS), quadrupole-monopole (QM) and magnetic dipole-magnetic dipole (DD) leading-order interactions are derived for compact binary systems in order to investigate the DD contribution in the orbit-averaged spin precession equations for binary neutron star systems neglecting the gravitational radiation-reaction effect. It is known that the magnitudes of spins are not conserved quantities due to the DD interaction. We give a simple analytical description for the pure DD interaction making the magnitudes of spins almost constant by neglecting the SO, SS and QM contributions. We also demonstrate the evolutions of the relative angles of spins and magnetic dipoles with the help of numeric simulations including all contributions (SO, SS, QM and DD) and introduce a dimensionless magnetic dipole parameter to characterize the strength of magnetic fields for some realistic neutron star binaries. We find that for realistic configurations the strong magnetic fields of neutron stars can modify the spin dynamics over long periods of time.