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Producing Ultrastrong Magnetic Fields in Neutron Star Mergers
Abstract
We report an extremely rapid mechanism for magnetic field amplification during the merger of a binary neutron star system. This has implications for the production of the short class of gamma-ray bursts, which recent observations suggest may originate in such mergers. In detailed magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the merger process, the fields are amplified by Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities beyond magnetar field strength and may therefore represent the strongest magnetic fields in the universe. The amplification occurs in the shear layer that forms between the neutron stars and on a time scale of only 1 millisecond, that is, long before the remnant can collapse into a black hole.
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We thank M. Brüggen, M. Höft, J. Vogt, R. West, and M. Bate for helpful discussions and comments. D.J.P. is supported by a U.K. Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council postdoctoral research fellowship. We thank the referees for their insightful comments.
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Published In
Science
Volume 312 | Issue 5774
5 May 2006
5 May 2006
Copyright
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Received: 20 January 2006
Accepted: 23 March 2006
Published in print: 5 May 2006
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