The Lives of the Neutron Stars

This NATO AS! was the third in the series of Advanced Study Institutes on neutron stars, which started with 'Timing Neutron Stars', held in Qe§me near izmir, Turkey (April 1988), followed by 'Neutron Stars, an Interdis ciplinary Subject', held in Agia Pelagia on the island of Crete (September 1990). The first school centered on our main observational access to neu tron stars, i. e. the timing of radio pulsars and accretion powered neutron stars, and on what timing of neutron stars teaches us of their structure and environment. The second school had as its theme the interplay between diverse areas of physics which find interesting, even exotic applications in the extreme conditions of neutron stars and their magnetospheres. As the field has developed, with the number of observed neutron stars rapidly in creasing, and our knowledge of many individual neutron stars getting deeper and more detailed, an evolutionary picture of neutron stars has started to emerge. This led us to choose 'The Lives of the Neutron Stars' as the uni fying theme of this third Advanced Study Institute on neutron stars. Different types of neutron star activity have been proposed to follow one another in stages during the lives of neutron stars in the same basic population; the evolutionary connection between low-mass X-ray binaries and millisecond radio pulsars is perhaps the prime example.

Klappentext

As the most compact known observable form of matter, neutron stars offer a fascinating range of problems to astrophysicists. This book offers a collection of reviews of current research on neutron stars, variously observed as radio pulsars, X-ray binaries, gamma-ray sources and sources of thermal X-ray emission. The reviews are meant for an audience of graduate students and scientists in the field, so they combine a tutorial approach with the objectives of a scientific review. The central theme of the book is evolution, stressing the changes of thermal, magnetic and dynamical properties throughout the lives of neutron stars. br/ br/

Inhalt
1 The Birth of Neutron Stars.- Observations of Supernovae.- The Rate of Supernovae.- On the Pulsar/SNR Associations.- Young Pulsars and Supernova Remnants.- ROSAT HRI Observations of the Crab Pulsar: an Improved Temperature Upper Limit for PSR 0531+2147.- ROSAT Observations of the UnusualSupernova Remnant CTB 80.- 2 The Structure of Neutron Stars and their Thermal, Magnetic and Dynamical Evolution.- The Physics of Neutron Star Crusts.- Neutron Star Atmospheres.- Model Atmospheres of Neutron Stars.- Atomic Motion and Ionizationin Pulsar Atmospheres.- X-Ray Observations of Cooling Neutron Stars.- Neutrino Emission from Dense Matter and Neutron Star Thermal Evolution.- Thermal Evolution of Neutron Stars: Current Status.- On the Optical Emission of Isolated Neutron Stars.- The Evolution of the Magnetic Fields of Neutron Stars.- Evolution of the Magnetic Fields and Constraints on theProperties of Neutron Star Interiors.- Radio Pulsar Slowdown.- The Jodrell Bank Timing Program.- Vela Monitoring from HARTRAO.- Models for Pulsar Glitches.- Postglitch Evolution of Pulsars.- Evolution of Pulsars on the P-P Diagram.- Interaction of a Pulsar with Interstellar Matter.- 3 Radio Pulsars.- Radio Pulsars.- Radio Pulsars; an Observational Prospect.- Millisecond Pulsar Searches.- Pulsar Geometrodynamics.- OSSE limits on Pulsar Gamma-Ray Emission.- The Distribution of Pulsars in the Galaxy.- Space Velocities of Pulsars.- 4 X-Ray Binaries .- X-ray Binaries.- Rapid Variability in X-ray Binaries - Toward a Unified Description.- Hard X-ray Observations of Black-Hole Candidates.- Accretion Disks.- Cyclic Accretion from a Disk onto a Neutron Star Magnetosphere.- The Rapid Burster: A Bizarre X-ray Binary.- A Radiation Hydrodynamic QPO Mechanism.- Comptonization in Spectral Branches of ZSources.- Torque Noise Models for Accretion Powered X-ray Binaries.- Timing of X-ray Pulsars with ART-P/Granat.- SIGMA Observations of Pulsars.- ROSAT Observations of Super-softs and Transients in the Magellanic Clouds.- 1E 1024.05732/Wack 2134: The First X-ray Selected Wolf-Rayet Star.- 5 and their Evolution.- Evolution of Binaries with Neutron Stars.- Spiral-in and Coalescence.- Evaporation of Millisecond Pulsar Companions.- The Birth Rate of Low-mass Binary Pulsars in the Galactic Disk.- 6 Gamma-ray Bursts.- The Gamma-ray Burst Mystery.- Search for Quiescent X Rays from GRB Sources.- 7 Observational Prospects.- The X-ray Timing Explorer: Progress and Science Prospects.- Advances in Detection of Gamma Rays from Neutron Stars.- Summary.- Summary of the Lives of Neutron Stars.- Author Index.- Object Index.