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The strongest cosmic magnets: soft gamma-ray repeaters and anomalous X-ray pulsars

Sandro Mereghetti
- 08 Jul 2008 - 
- Vol. 15, Iss: 4, pp 225-287
Abstract
Two classes of X-ray pulsars, the anomalous X-ray pulsars and the soft gamma-ray repeaters, have been recognized in the last decade as the most promising candidates for being magnetars: isolated neutron stars powered by magnetic energy. I review the observational properties of these objects, focussing on the most recent results, and their interpretation in the magnetar model. Alternative explanations, in particular those based on accretion from residual disks, are also considered. The possible relations between these sources and other classes of neutron stars and astrophysical objects are also discussed.

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Citations
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A new investigation of the possible X-ray counterparts of the magnetar candidate AX J1845−0258

TL;DR: In this article, a new investigation of all the X-ray sources in the ASCA error region of AX J1845-0258, using archival data obtained with Chandra in 2007 and 2010, and with XMM-Newton in 2010.
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Phase Drifts of Sub-pulses during the 2004 Giant Flare of SGR 1806-20 and Settling of the Magnetic Fields

TL;DR: In this paper, the phase evolution of the sub-pulses identified in the X-ray waveform was studied and it was shown that the subpulsus varied in phase with time and then gradually settled, which might indicate drifts of the emission regions in relative to the neutron star surface.
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Vacuum Polarization and Photon Propagation in an Electromagnetic Plane Wave

TL;DR: In this paper, a perturbation theory was developed to calculate the induced electromagnetic current that appears in the Maxwell equations, based on Schwinger's proper-time method, and combine it with the so-called gradient expansion to handle the variation of external fields perturbatively.
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Search for High-Energy Gamma-ray Emission from Anomalous X-ray Pulsar, 4U 0142+61

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the high-energy gamma-ray properties of the brightest anomalous X-ray pulsar 4U 0142+61 using data collected with the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to establish the spectral behavior of the source on a very broad energy span and search for pulsed emission.
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SGR 0418+5729: a small inclination angle resulting in a not so low dipole magnetic field?

TL;DR: In this paper, the pulsar spin down model of Contopoulos & Spitkovsky was applied to SGR 418+5729 and it was shown that SGR 0418+ 5729 lies below the pulsars death line and its rotation-powered magnetospheric activities may therefore have stopped.
References
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Book

Compact Stellar X-ray Sources

TL;DR: A decade of X-ray sources and their evolution is described in this paper, with a focus on the formation and evolution of super-soft sources and the formation of compact stellar sources.
Journal ArticleDOI

Formation of very strongly magnetized neutron stars - Implications for gamma-ray bursts

TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that a convective dynamo can also generate a very strong dipole field after the merger of a neutron star binary, but only if the merged star survives for as long as about 10-100 ms.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Soft Gamma Repeaters as Very Strongly Magnetized Neutron Stars. II. Quiescent Neutrino, X-Ray, and Alfvén Wave Emission

TL;DR: In this article, the decay rate of the core field is a very strong function of temperature and therefore of the magnetic flux density, which is not present in the decay of the weaker fields associated with ordinary radio pulsars.
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