Thermal conduction across neutron star crusts and cooling of young neutron stars

We calculate thermal conduction times in the crust and core of a neutron star and find that for certain neutron star models the surface remains thermally isolated from the core at initial times. The surface temperature of a few hundred year old neutron star in these models can be insensitive to the presence of a pion-condensed core and might well be within the limits of observability of the HEAO satellite which can help to distinguish between different neutron star models. (orig.)