Atmospheric Effects on Neutron Star Parameter Constraints with NICER

We present an analysis of the effects of uncertainties in the atmosphere models on the radius, mass, and other neutron star parameter constraints for the NICER observations of rotation-powered millisecond pulsars. To date, NICER has applied the X-ray pulse profile modeling technique to two millisecond-period pulsars: PSR J0030+0451 and the high-mass pulsar PSR J0740+6620. These studies have commonly assumed a deep-heated, fully ionized hydrogen atmosphere model, although they have explored the effects of partial ionization and helium composition in some cases. Here, we extend that exploration and also include new models with partially ionized carbon composition, externally heated hydrogen, and an empirical atmospheric beaming parameterization to explore deviations in the expected anisotropy of the emitted radiation. None of the studied atmosphere cases have any significant influence on the inferred radius of PSR J0740+6620, possibly due to its X-ray faintness, tighter external constraints, and/or viewing geometry. In the case of PSR J0030+0451, both the composition and ionization state could significantly alter the inferred radius. However, based on the evidence (prior predictive probability of the data), partially ionized hydrogen and carbon atmospheres are disfavored. The difference in the evidence for ionized hydrogen and helium atmospheres is too small to be decisive for most cases, but the inferred radius for helium models trends to larger sizes around or above 14-15 km. External heating or deviations in the beaming that are less than 5% at emission angles smaller than 60°, on the other hand, have no significant effect on the inferred radius.