Magnetar Crusts as Spaghetti Insulators

Vikram Soni, Mitja Rosina

Published 2018-04-15Version 1

In this work, we find that the at the typical high polar magnetic fields of magnetars, $B \sim 10^{14-15}$ G, the transverse conductivity in the crust goes inversely as the square of polar magnetic field (as $1/B^2$). At these high fields, this indicates that the transverse crustal currents associated with the polar magnetic field can then dissipate more effectively via Ohm's law. This could well explain the anomalously high X-ray luminosity of magnetars. We also find that if we have fields, $B \sim 10^{14-15}$ G, the outermost crust ($\rho < 10^7$ g/cm$^3$) of the star can become an insulator, whereas the higher density inner crust is a high resistivity filamentary crystal.