Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Scientific paper
2009-07-27
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, Volume 399, Issue 1, pp. L74-L78 (2009)
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
5 pages, 3 figures (1 color) and 2 tables; Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters
Scientific paper
10.1111/j.1745-3933.2009.00728.x
SGR 0526-66 was the first soft gamma-ray repeater (SGR) from which a giant flare was detected in March 1979, suggesting the existence of magnetars, i.e. neutron stars powered by the decay of their extremely strong magnetic field. Since then, very little information has been obtained on this object, mainly because it has been burst-inactive since 1983 and the study of its persistent X-ray emission has been hampered by its large distance and its location in a X-ray bright supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Here we report on a comprehensive analysis of all the available XMM-Newton observations of SGR 0526-66. In particular, thanks to a deep observation taken in 2007, we measured its pulsation period (P = 8.0544 +/- 0.0002 s) 6 years after its latest detection by Chandra. This allowed us to detect for the first time a significant reduction of its spin-down rate. From a comparison with two shorter XMM-Newton observations performed in 2000 and 2001, we found no significant changes in the spectrum, which is well modelled by an absorbed power-law with nH = 4.6E+21 cm^-2 and photon index = 3.27. The high luminosity (about 4E+35 erg/s, in the 1-10 keV energy band) still observed about 25 years after the latest detection of bursting activity places SGR 0526-66 in the group of bright and persistent magnetar candidates.
Esposito Paolo
Feroci Marco
Gotz Diego
Israel Gian Luca
Mereghetti Sandro
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