| Cooling Neutron Stars With Accreted Envelopes (2007) | |||||||||||||||
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| The relationships between the effective surface temperature T eff and internal temperature T b of nonmagnetized neutron stars with and without accreted envelopes are calculated for T eff ? 5 \Theta 10 4 K. We use updated equations of state and radiative opacities, and we improve considerably the electron conductive opacity. We examine various models of accreted layers (H, He, C, O subshells produced by nuclear burning of accreted matter). The resulting T eff \Gamma T b relationship is remarkably insensitive to the details of the models and depends mainly on the accreted mass \DeltaM . For T eff ? 10 5 K, the accreted matter is generally more heat-transparent. Even a small accreted mass (\DeltaM ΒΈ ? 10 \Gamma13 M fi ) affects appreciably the cooling of a neutron star, leading to higher T eff at the neutrino cooling stage and to lower T eff at the subsequent photon stage. We illustrate this by simulating the standard cooling of neutron stars. The presence of accreted matter yiel... | |||||||||||||||
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