Impact of an off-centred dipole on neutron star binaries

Abstract

ABSTRACT Neutron stars are strongly magnetized rotating compact objects. Therefore, they also produce huge electric fields accelerating particles to ultrarelativistic energies. The simplest magnetic topology is a dipole traditionally located at the stellar centre. In this paper, we re-investigate the consequences of an off-centred rotating magnetic dipole, showing accurate magnetic field line geometries, the associated spin-down luminosity as well as the corresponding electromagnetic kick and torque imprinted to the neutron star. Results are obtained by time-dependent numerical simulations of Maxwell equations in vacuum using pseudo-spectral methods. We compare our results to known analytical expressions available to lowest order in the parameter ϵ = d/R, where d is the displacement of the dipole from the stellar centre and R the neutron star radius. We found good agreement between our numerical computations and our analytical approximations even for well off-centred dipoles having large displacements with a sizeable fraction of the radius, i.e. ϵ ≲ 1. An explanation for binary neutron star eccentricity distribution functions is given with an emphasize on highly eccentric systems as an alternative scenario to traditional binary formation.