Internal heating of old neutron stars: contrasting different mechanisms

Context. The standard cooling models of neutron stars predict temperatures of T < 104 K for ages t > 107 yr. However, the likely thermal emission detected from the millisecond pulsar J0437-4715, of spin-down age ts ~ 7 × 109 yr, implies a temperature T ~ 105 K. Thus, a heating mechanism needs to be added to the cooling models in order to obtain agreement between theory and observation.

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