Exploring reheated sub-40000 Kelvin neutron stars with JWST, ELT, and TMT

Raj, N and Shivanna, P and Rachh, GN (2024) Exploring reheated sub-40000 Kelvin neutron stars with JWST, ELT, and TMT. In: Physical Review D, 109 (12).

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Abstract

Neutron stars cooling passively since their birth may be reheated in their late-stage evolution by a number of possible phenomena; rotochemical, vortex creep, crust cracking, magnetic field decay, or more exotic processes such as removal of neutrons from their Fermi seas (the nucleon Auger effect), baryon number-violating nucleon decay, and accretion of particle dark matter. Using Exposure Time Calculator tools, we show that reheating mechanisms imparting effective temperatures of 2000-40000 Kelvin may be uncovered with excellent sensitivities at the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), with imaging instruments operating from visible-edge to near-infrared. With a day of exposure, they could constrain the reheating luminosity of a neutron star up to a distance of 500 pc, within which about 105 (undiscovered) neutron stars lie. Detection in multiple filters could overconstrain a neutron star's surface temperature, distance from Earth, mass, and radius. Using publicly available catalogs of newly discovered pulsars at the FAST and CHIME radio telescopes and the Galactic electron distribution models YMW16 and NE2001, we estimate the pulsars' dispersion measure distance from Earth, and find that potentially 30-40 of these may be inspected for late-stage reheating within viable exposure times, in addition to a few hundred candidates already present in the ATNF catalog. Whereas the coldest neutron star observed (PSR J2144-3933) has an upper limit on its effective temperature of about 33000 Kelvin set with the Hubble Space Telescope, we show that the effective temperature may be constrained down to 20000 Kelvin with JWST-NIRCam, 15000 Kelvin with ELT-MICADO, and 9000 Kelvin with TMT-IRIS. Campaigns to measure thermal luminosities of old neutron stars would be transformative for astrophysics and fundamental physics. © 2024 American Physical Society.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Physical Review D
Publisher:	American Physical Society
Additional Information:	The copyright for this article belongs to American Physical Society.
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Centre for High Energy Physics
Date Deposited:	18 Dec 2024 08:55
Last Modified:	18 Dec 2024 08:55
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/85855

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