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The long term (~1.5 years) X-ray enhancement and the accompanying infrared enhancement light curves of the anomalous X-ray pulsar 1E 2259+58 following the major bursting epoch can be accounted for by the relaxation of a fall back disk that has been pushed back by a gamma-ray flare. The required burst energy estimated from the results of our model fits is low enough for such a burst to have remained below the detection limits. We find that an irradiated disk model with a low irradiation efficiency is in good agreement with both X-ray and infrared data. Non-irradiated disk models also give a good fit to the X-ray light curve, but are not consistent with the infrared data for the first week of the enhancement., Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

In the inner regions of accretion disks around compact objects, the orbital frequency of the gas deviates from the local Keplerian value. For long-wavelength modes in this region, the radial epicyclic frequency kappa is higher than the azimuthal frequency Omega. This has significant implications for models of the twin kHz QPOs observed in many neutron-star sources that traditionally identify the frequencies of the two kHz QPOs with dynamical frequencies in the accretion disk. The recognition that the highest frequency in the transition or boundary region of the disk is actually the epicyclic frequency also modifies significantly the constraints imposed by the observation of high-frequency QPOs on the mass and radius of the compact objects., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, submitted to ApJ Letters

Basic rotational and magnetic properties of neutron superfluids and proton superconductors in neutron stars are reviewed. The modes of precession of the neutron superfluid are discussed in detail. We emphasize that at finite temperature, pinning of superfluid vortices does not offer any constraint on the precession. Any pinning energies can be surmounted by thermal activation and there exists a dynamical steady state in which the superfluid follows the precession of the crust at a small lag angle between the crust and superfluid rotation velocity vectors. At this small lag the system is far from the critical conditions for unpinning, even if the observed precession of the crust may entail a large angle between the figure axis and the crust's rotation velocity vector. We conclude that if long period modulations of pulse arrival times and pulse shapes observed in a pulsar like the PSR B1828-11 are due to the precession of the neutron star, this does not have any binding implications about the existence of pinning by flux lines or the existence of Type II superconductivity in the neutron star., Comment: 21 pages, one figure, to appear in the Proceedings of the NATO-ASI "The Electromagnetic Spectrum of Neutron Stars" held in Marmaris, Turkey, June 2004, eds. A. Baykal, S.K. Yerli, C. Inam and S. Grebenev

This article describes the investigation of morphological variations among two set of neuronal cells, namely a control group of wild type rat cells and a group of cells of a trangenic line. Special attention is given to sigular points in the neuronal structure, namely the branching points and extremities of the dendritic processes. The characterization of the spatial distribution of such points is obtained by using a recently reported morphological technique based on forced percolation and window-size compensation, which is particularly suited to the analysis of scattered points presenting several coexisting densities. Different dispersions were identified in our statistical analysis, suggesting that the transgenic line of neurons is characterized by a more pronounced morphological variation. A classification scheme based on a canonical discriminant function was also considered in order to identify the morphological differences., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures and 1 table

We investigate the rotational dynamics of disk accretion around a strongly magnetized neutron star with an aligned dipole field. The magnetospheric field is assumed to thread the disk plasma both inside and outside the corotation radius. As a result of disk-star interaction, the magnetic torque on the disk affects the structure of accretion flow to yield the observed spin-up or spin-down rates for a source of given fastness, magnetic field strength, and mass accretion rate. Within the model we obtain a prescription for the dynamical viscosity of such magnetically modified solutions for a Keplerian disk. We then use this prescription to find a model solution for the rotation rate profile throughout the entire disk including the non-Keplerian inner disk. We find that the non-Keplerian angular velocity transition region is not necessarily narrow for a source of given spin state. The boundary layer approximation, as in the standard magnetically threaded disk model, holds only in the case of dynamical viscosity decreasing all the way to the innermost edge of the disk. These results are applied to several observed disk-fed X-ray pulsars that have exhibited quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs). The QPO frequencies provide a constraint on the fastness parameter and enable one to determine uniquely the width of the angular velocity transition zone for each source within model assumptions. We discuss the implications of these results on the value of the critical fastness parameter for a magnetized star in spin equilibrium. Applications of our model are also made with relevant parameters from recent numerical simulations of quasi-stationary disk-magnetized star interactions., Comment: 27 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

The radiation pressure of a radio pulsar does not necessarily disrupt a surrounding disk. The position of the inner radius of a thin disk around a neutron star can be estimated by comparing the electromagnetic energy density generated by the neutron star with the kinetic energy density of the disk. Inside the light cylinder, the near zone electromagnetic field is essentially the dipole magnetic field, and the inner radius is the conventional Alfven radius. Far outside the light cylinder, in the radiation zone, $E=B$ and the electromagnetic energy density is $/c \propto 1/r^2$ where $S$ is the Poynting vector. Shvartsman (1970) argued that a stable equilibrium can not be found in the radiative zone because the electromagnetic energy density dominates over the kinetic energy density, with the relative strength of the electromagnetic stresses increasing with radius. In order to check whether this is true also near the light cylinder, we employ global electromagnetic field solutions for rotating oblique magnetic dipoles (Deutsch 1955). Near the light cylinder the electromagnetic energy density increases steeply enough with decreasing $r$ to balance the kinetic energy density at a stable equilibrium. The transition from the near zone to the radiation zone is broad. The radiation pressure of the pulsar can not disrupt the disk for values of the inner radius up to about twice the light cylinder radius if the rotation axis and the magnetic axis are orthogonal. This allowed range beyond the light cylinder extends much further for small inclination angles. We discuss implications of this result for accretion driven millisecond pulsars and young neutron stars with fallback disks., Comment: Accepted by Astrophysical Journal, final version with a minor correction