World Scientific Publishing, International Journal of Modern Physics D, 06(19), p. 805-810, 2010
DOI: 10.1142/s0218271810016786
Full text: Unavailable
Recent monitoring of the quiescent thermal emission from NSs in low mass X–ray binaries (LMXBs) after active periods (bursts) opened a new view to the physics of dense matter. Theoretical modeling of the thermal relaxation of the crust may be used to establish constraints on the thermal conductivity of matter, depending on the accretion rate. We present here cooling curves obtained from numerical simulations that fit the light curves for two sources (KS 1731-260, MXB 1659-29). We estimate the model parameters (accretion rate, thermal conductivity) that match the data and compare our results with previous constraints of neutron star crust properties in LMXBs.