General relativistic effects on the cooling of neutron stars

The authors present a discussion of general relativistic effects on the cooling of neutron stars and show analytically that these almost cancel for the dominant neutrino processes and a very stiff equation of state (apart from a trivial redshift of the surface temperature for an observer ''at infinity''). Numerical results for a ''realistic'' equation of state show larger general relativistic corrections. These are, however, still smaller than the uncertainties in the neutrino loss rates. Previous results of cooling curves would thus not be changed significantly by a general relativistic treatment of the thermal properties of neutron stars. (Auth.)