Photons generated by gravitational waves in the near-zone of a neutron star

Abstract

When a gravitational wave or a graviton travels through an electric or magnetic background, it could convert into a photon with some probability. In this paper, a dipole magnetic field is considered as this kind of background in both the Minkowski spacetime and the curved spacetime in the near-zone of a neutron star. In the former case, we find that the graviton traveling vertically rather than parallel to the background magnetic field could be more effectively converted into an electromagnetic radiation field. In the latter case, we focus on the situation, in which the graviton travels along the radial direction near a neutron star. The radius of a neutron star is about ten kilometers, so the gravitational wave with long wavelength or low frequency may bypass neutron stars by diffraction. For high frequency gravitational wave, the conversion probability is proportional to the distance square as that in the static electric or magnetic background case. The smaller the inclination angle between the dipole field and the neutron star north pole is, the larger magnetic amplitude will be. The term that described curved spacetime will slightly enhance this kind of probability. We estimate that this value is about the order of ∼10−14−10−10. Therefore, it is expectable that this kind of conversion process may have a potential to open a window for observing high frequency gravitational waves.