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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Toby Wood
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Current models of magnetars require extremely strong magnetic fields to explain their observed quiescent and bursting emission, implying that the field strength within the star’s outer crust is orders of magnitude larger than the dipole component inferred from spindown measurements. This presents a serious challenge to theories of magnetic field generation in a proto-neutron star. Here, we present detailed modelling of the evolution of the magnetic field in the crust of a neutron star through 3-D simulations. We find that, in the plausible scenario of equipartition of energy between global-scale poloidal and toroidal magnetic components, magnetic instabilities transfer energy to non-axisymmetric, kilometre-sized magnetic features, in which the local field strength can greatly exceed that of the global-scale field. These intense small-scale magnetic features can induce high energy bursts through local crust yielding, and the localised enhancement of Ohmic heating can power the star’s persistent emission. Thus, the observed diversity in magnetar behaviour can be explained with mixed poloidal-toroidal fields of comparable energies.
Author(s): Gourgouliatos KN, Wood TS, Hollerbach R
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Year: 2016
Volume: 113
Issue: 15
Pages: 3944-3949
Print publication date: 12/04/2016
Online publication date: 28/03/2016
Acceptance date: 26/02/2016
Date deposited: 31/03/2016
ISSN (print): 0027-8424
ISSN (electronic): 1091-6490
Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1522363113
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1522363113
PubMed id: 27035962
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