A young cooling neutron star in the remnant of Supernova 1987A

Abstract

We describe the cooling theory for isolated neutron stars that are several tens of years old. Their cooling differs greatly from the cooling of older stars that has been well studied in the literature. It is sensitive to the physics of the inner stellar crust and even to the thermal conductivity of the stellar core, which is never important at later cooling stages. The absence of observational evidence for the formation of a neutron star during the explosion of Supernova 1987A is consistent with the fact that the star was actually born there. It may still be hidden in the dense center of the supernova remnant. If, however, the star is not hidden, then it should have a low thermal luminosity (below ∼1034 erg s−1) and a short internal thermal relaxation time (shorter than 13 yr). This requires that the star undergo intense neutrino cooling (e.g., via the direct Urca process) and have a thin crust with strong superfluidity of free neutrons and/or an anomalously high thermal conductivity.