The strongest cosmic magnets: soft gamma-ray repeaters and anomalous X-ray pulsars
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.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Twisting, reconnecting magnetospheres and magnetar spindown
TL;DR: In this article, the first simulations of strongly twisted magnetar magnetospheres are presented, showing that a dramatic increase in spindown occurs with a sudden opening of large amounts of overtwisted magnetic flux.
Journal ArticleDOI
Magnetar Broadband X-Ray Spectra Correlated with Magnetic Fields: Suzaku Archive of SGRs and AXPs Combined with NuSTAR, Swift, and RXTE
Teruaki Enoto,Shinpei Shibata,Takao Kitaguchi,Yudai Suwa,Takahiko Uchide,Hiroyuki Nishioka,Shota Kisaka,Toshio Nakano,Hiroaki Murakami,Kazuo Makishima +9 more
TL;DR: In this article, the 1-70 keV persistent spectra of 15 magnetars, observed with Suzaku from 2006 to 2013, were studied as a complete sample, and the results were compared with their long-term 1-10 keV flux decays monitored with Swift/XRT and RXTE/PCA.
Journal ArticleDOI
The progenitor mass of the magnetar SGR1900+14
Ben Davies,Ben Davies,Donald F. Figer,Rolf-Peter Kudritzki,Christine Trombley,Chryssa Kouveliotou,Stefanie Wachter +6 more
TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that the initial progenitor star mass of the magnetar was a factor of two lower than this limit, M_prog=17 \pm 2 Msun.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Five Year Fermi/GBM Magnetar Burst Catalog
Andrew C. Collazzi,Chryssa Kouveliotou,Chryssa Kouveliotou,A. J. van der Horst,George Younes,George Younes,Yuki Kaneko,Ersin Gogus,Lin Lin,Jonathan Granot,Mark H. Finger,Vandiver Chaplin,Daniela Huppenkothen,Anna L. Watts,A. von Kienlin,Matthew G. Baring,David Gruber,P. N. Bhat,Melissa Gibby,Neil Gehrels,J. McEnery,M. van der Klis,Ralph A. M. J. Wijers +22 more
TL;DR: The Fermi/GBM magnetar catalog as discussed by the authors provides the results of the temporal and spectral analyses of 440 magnetar bursts with high-temporal and spectral resolution, covering the first five years of GBM magnetar observations, from 2008 July to 2013 June.
Journal ArticleDOI
X-ray spectra from magnetar candidates - III. Fitting SGR/AXP soft X-ray emission with non-relativistic Monte Carlo models
TL;DR: In this article, a 3D Monte Carlo code for solving radiation transport as soft, thermal photons emitted by the star surface are resonantly upscattered by the magnetospheric particles is presented.
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