Cooling of superfluid neutron stars with muons

Bejger, M.; Yakovlev, D. G.; Gnedin, O. Y.

Cooling of superfluid neutron stars with muons

Authors

Bejger, M.

Yakovlev, D. G.

Gnedin, O. Y.

Description

We extend our modeling of cooling of superfluid neutron stars by including the production of muons in the core, in addition to neutrons, protons, and electrons. The results are confronted with observations of middle-aged isolated NSs. Muons have little effect on the hydrostatic structure of NSs, on the slow cooling of low-mass NSs (RX J0822--43 and PSR 1055--52 in our model) and on the rapid cooling of massive NSs. They affect, however, the moderately fast cooling of medium-mass NSs (1E 1207--52, RX J0002+62, PSR 0656+14, Vela, and Geminga) and shift appreciably the mass range of these NSs to lower masses, which is important for correct interpretation of the observations. Moreover, the effects of muons can accurately be reproduced by a simple renormalization of NS models with no muons in the NS cores.
10 pages, 3 figures included, accepted for publication in Acta Physica Polonica