Journal article

Neutron star deformation due to multipolar magnetic fields

A Mastrano, PD Lasky, A Melatos

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Published : 2013

Abstract

Certain multiwavelength observations of neutron stars, such as intermittent radio emissions from rotation-powered pulsars beyond the pair-cascade death line, the pulse profile of the magnetar SGR 1900+14 after its 1998 August 27 giant flare and X-ray spectral features of PSR J0821-4300 and SGR 0418+5729, suggest that the magnetic fields of non-accreting neutron stars are not purely dipolar and may contain higher order multipoles. Here, we calculate the ellipticity of a non-barotropic neutron star with (i) a quadrupole poloidal-toroidal field, and (ii) a purely poloidal field containing arbitrary multipoles, deriving the relation between the ellipticity and the multipole amplitudes. We presen..

View full abstract

University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

We thank Arthur Suvorov for discussions. We thank the anonymous reviewer for the constructive comments. AMa thanks Kostas Kokkotas for the hospitality shown during his stay at the University of Tubingen, where this work was completed. This work is supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant (DP110103347) and a University of Melbourne Early Career Researcher Grant.