Internal heating mechanisms in neutron stars

Understand

The cooling of neutron stars (hereafter NS) has the potential to reveal important features of superdense matter.

• Their surface temperatures are known for a fair sample of NS with ages $\leq 10^{6} \, {\it{yr}}$, and with a few exceptions, can be accommodated by standard cooling mechanisms (neutrino+photon emission without internal heating).
• However, for the older objects it is necessary to consider some internal heating to explain surface temperatures higher than expected.
• We revisit in this paper the kinetic heating by fermionic dark matter, rotochemical heating and magnetic field decay.