Other
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21921802k&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #218.02
Other
Scientific paper
Prior to the launch of RXTE, the hypothesis by Thompson and Duncan that there exists a class of ultra-highly magnetized young neutron stars whose emission is powered by the decay of their magnetic field -- the so-called `magnetar' model -- was beautiful, yet unproven. The magnetar model was motivated the existence of Soft Gamma Repeaters (SGRs), which had been observed to exhibit dramatic X-ray and soft gamma ray bursts and in one case, 8-s pulsations in the tail of a major flare. Meanwhile, there was recognized another puzzling group of seemingly very different objects, the 'Anomalous X-ray Pulsars' (AXPs), so-called due to their bright, several-second X-ray pulsations, steady spin down, low spin-down power and absence of any binary companion from which mass could be accreted. AXPs had also been suggested to be magnetars by Thompson and Duncan, though this too was unproven.
Today, thanks to multiple landmark RXTE results, these two groups of object have been united into a single source class, which is now nearly universally identified with magnetars. Specifically, the discovery from SGRs of regular X-ray pulsations and steady spin-down (as had been observed in AXPs), as well as the discovery of bright X-ray bursts from AXPs (as had been observed in SGRs) has demonstrated unambiguously the common nature of AXPs and SGRs, as was predicted uniquely in the magnetar model. Moreover, RXTE discoveries of several observational links between AXPs, SGRs and rotation-powered pulsars, specifically the detection of spin-up glitches in AXPs, as well as the observation of a temporary metamorphosis of one rotation-powered pulsar into a magnetar-like source, hint at a broader unification of the magnetars with the general radio pulsar population, with the observational differences attributable to a combination of age and magnetic field.
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