Atmospheres and Spectra of Strongly Magnetized Neutron Stars. III. Partially Ionized Hydrogen Models

Abstract

We construct partially ionized hydrogen atmosphere models for magnetized neutron stars in radiative equilibrium with surface fields B = 1012-5 × 1014 G and effective temperatures Teff ~ a few × 105-106 K. These models are based on the latest equation of state and opacity results for magnetized, partially ionized hydrogen plasmas that take into account various magnetic and dense medium effects. The atmospheres directly determine the characteristics of thermal emission from isolated neutron stars. For the models with B = 1012-1013 G, the spectral features due to neutral atoms lie at extreme UV and very soft X-ray energy bands and therefore are difficult to observe. However, the continuum flux is also different from the fully ionized case, especially at lower energies. For the superstrong field models (B ≳ 1014 G), we show that the vacuum polarization effect not only suppresses the proton cyclotron line as shown previously, but also suppresses spectral features due to bound species; therefore, spectral lines or features in thermal radiation are more difficult to observe when the neutron star magnetic field is ≳1014 G.