RT Journal Article
T1 Bragg diffraction and the iron crust of cold neutron stars
A1 Llanes Estrada, Felipe José
A1 Moreno Navarro, Gaspar
AB If cooled-down neutron stars have a thin atomic crystalline-iron crust, they must diffract X-rays of appropriate wavelength. If the diffracted beam is to be visible from Earth (an extremely rare but possible situation), the illuminating source must be very intense and near the reflecting star. An example is a binary system composed of two neutron stars in close orbit, one of them inert, the other an X-ray pulsar. (Perhaps an "anomalous" X-ray pulsar or magnetar, not powered by gas absorption from the companion or surrounding space, would be the cleanest example.) The observable to be searched for is a secondary peak added (quasi-) periodically to the main X-ray pulse. The distinguishing feature of this secondary peak is that it appears at wavelengths related by simple integer numbers,λ,λ/2,λ/3,...,λ/n because of Bragg's diffraction law.
PB Springer
SN 0004-640X
YR 2012
FD 2012-01
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/43908
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/43908
LA eng
NO © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.The authors thank Krysty Dyer and Katja Waidelich for a careful reading of the first manuscript. This work was supported in part by grants FPA2007-29115-E, MCYT FPA 2008-00592/FPA, FIS2008-01323 (Spain).
NO MCYT (Spain)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 11 abr 2025