Thermal properties of the core of magnetar

Abstract

During very early age of neutron stars, the core cools down faster compared to the crust creating a large thermal gradient in the interior of the star. During 10−100 years, a cooling wave propagates from the core to the crust causing the interior of the star to thermalize. During this duration thermal properties of the core material is of great importance to understand the dynamics of the interior of the star. The heat capacity and thermal conductivity of the core depends on the behaviour of matter inside the core. We investigate these two properties in case of magnetars. Due to presence of large magnetic field, the proton superconductivity is quenched partially inside the magnetars depending upon the comparative values of upper critical field and the strength of the magnetic field present. This produces non-uniformity in the behaviour of matter throughout the star. Moreover, such non-uniformity arises from the variation of nature of the pairing and values of the pairing gap energy. We find that the heat capacity is substantially reduced due to the presence of superfluidity. On the other hand, the thermal conductivity of neutron is enhanced due to proton superconductivity and gets reduced due to neutron superfluidity. Hence, the variation of the thermal properties due to superfluidity in presence of magnetic field is different at different radius inside the star. However, in all the cases the maximum variation is of the order one. This affects the thermal relaxation time of the star and eventually its the thermal evolution.