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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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Journal ArticleDOI

Unusual glitch activity in the RRAT J1819−1458: an exhausted magnetar?

TL;DR: In this article, an analysis of regular timing observations of the high magnetic field Rotating Radio Transient (RRAT) J1819−1458 obtained using the 64m Parkes and 76m Lovell radio telescopes over the past 5 years is presented.
Journal ArticleDOI

Lifting shell structures in the dynamically assisted Schwinger effect in periodic fields

TL;DR: In this article, the Schwinger effect is considered for the superposition of two periodic electric fields acting in a finite time interval, and a strong enhancement by orders of magnitude caused by a weak field with a frequency being a multitude of the strong field frequency is found.
Journal ArticleDOI

The fundamental plane for radio magnetars

TL;DR: In this paper, it was shown that radio emission from magnetars might be powered by rotational energy, similarly to what occurs in normal radio pulsars, and that magnetar radio activity or inactivity can be predicted from the knowledge of the star's rotational period, its time derivative and the quiescent X-ray luminosity.
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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