The Giant Flare from SGR 1900+14

Details The Giant Flare from SGR 1900+14 The Giant Flare from SGR 1900+14

Oct 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000head....5.3301f&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, HEAD Meeting #5, #33.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 32, p.1240

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Scientific paper

We present a joint analysis of the Ulysses (25-150 keV) and BeppoSAX/GRBM (40-700 keV) data on the giant flare of 1998 August 27 from SGR 1900+14. This event was extraordinary in many ways: it was the most intense flux of gamma rays ever detected from a source outside our solar system; it was longer than any previously detected burst from a soft gamma repeater (SGR) in our Galaxy by more than an order of magnitude; and it showed a remarkable four-peaked, periodic pattern in hard X-rays with the same 5.16-s period that was observed in X-rays from the quiescent star. Since the two instruments operate in different energy ranges, a comparison of their data allow for both time-average and time-resolved spectral studies. We discuss some implications of these results for the SGRs. We also compare this event with the 1979 March 5 giant flare from SGR 0526-26, by newly-analyzed Venera/SIGNE and ISEE-3 data. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that giant flares are due to catastrophic magnetic instabilities in highly magnetized neutron stars, or ``magnetars". In particular, observations indicate that the initial hard spike involved a relativistic outflow of pairs and hard gamma rays, plausibly triggered by a large propagating fracture in the crust of a neutron star with a field exceeding 1014 Gauss. Later stages in the light curve are accurately fit by a model for emission from the envelope of a magnetically-confined pair-photon fireball, anchored to the surface of the rotating star, which contracts as it emits X-rays and then evaporates completely in a finite time. The complex four-peaked shape of the light curve likely provides the most direct evidence known for a multipolar geometry in the magnetic field of a neutron star.

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