General Relativistic Effects on Magnetar Models of AXPs.pdfVIP

GENERAL RELATIVISTIC EFFECTS ON MAGNETAR MODELS OF AXPS ¨ F. OZEL Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA 1 E-mail: fozel@cfa.harvard.edu 0 0 General relativistic bending of light dramatically alters the variability of X-ray 2 emission originating from the surfaces of ultramagnetic neutron stars. We con- n struct radiative equilibrium models of such strongly magnetic cooling neutron stars u with light-element atmospheres to compute the angle- and energy-dependent in- J tensity emerging from their surfaces and find that the beaming of surface emission is predominantly non-radial. The combination of this radiation pattern with the 5 calculations of light bending yields pulse amplitudes that vary non-monotonically with the neutron star compactness and the size of the emitting region. The sig- 1 nificant suppression of the pulse amplitude for large emitting areas provides very v strong constraints on the mechanisms that can simultaneously produce high pe- 1 riodic variability and X-ray luminosity.