X-ray Propagation in Strongly Magnetized Plasmas

Abstract

A new treatment of the calculation of the dielectric tensor of a magnetized plasma in an extremely strong field, such as occurs in magnetized neutron stars, is presented. An accurate numerical scheme for the evaluation of the hermitian and antihermitian parts of the tensor is used to calculate the refractive index and absorption cross section for magnetic fields and plasma temperatures typical of pulsating X-ray sources and y-ray burst sources.