Accreting neutron stars: heating of the upper layers of the inner crust

Autor: Shchechilin, Nikolay N., Gusakov, Mikhail E., Chugunov, Andrey I.
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: MNRAS:Letters 515 (2022), L6-L10
Druh dokumentu: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slac059
Popis: Neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries are thought to be heated up by accretion-induced exothermic nuclear reactions in the crust. The energy release and the location of the heating sources are important ingredients of the thermal evolution models. Here we present thermodynamically consistent calculations of the energy release in three zones of the stellar crust: at the outer-inner crust interface, in the upper layers of the inner crust (up to the density $\rho \leq 2\times 10^{12}$ g cm$^{-3}$), and in the underlying crustal layers. We consider three representative models of thermonuclear ashes (Superburst, Extreme rp, and Kepler ashes). The energy release in each zone is parametrized by the pressure at the outer-inner crust interface, which encodes all uncertainties related to the physics of the deepest inner-crust layers. Our calculations allow us, in particular, to set new lower limits on the net energy release (per accreted baryon): $Q\gtrsim0.28$ MeV for Extreme rp ashes and Q~0.43-0.51 MeV for Superburst and Kepler ashes.
Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure; submitted to MNRAS:Letters
Databáze: arXiv