Vyacheslav Zavlin: Pulsar high energy emission: Soft X-rays

This presentation was a broad overview of soft x-ray emission from pulsars/NSs. Observations of NSs in the soft X-ray band are important since the bulk of the flux from NSs falls in this range and since some NSs/pulsars have still not been detected outside this range. Both thermal and non-thermal emission can be observed. The thermal emission, due to internal heat (or from a small hot spot), is ideal to constrain the equation of state. It is important to note that a blackbody interpretation of the thermal radiation implies an emission area much smaller than with a H-atmosphere interpretation. The non-thermal emission can be due to the magnetosphere, pulsar wind nebula, or inter-binary shocks. Young objects (~1 kyr) are dominated by non-thermal emission, while middle-aged and old pulsar (>1 Gyr) are dominated by thermal radiation, from the surface and hot polar caps respectively. The author presented different objects that have been observed in different wavelength bands (Vela, PSR J0538+2817, Geminga, ...). In most cases,  polar caps (thermal emission) were (very likely) detected. However, non-thermal emission can be used in many cases to explain the X-ray emission. Finally, regarding the cooling models of pulsars/NSs, we notice large difference in the cooling curve whether or not proton superfluidity is included in the model.