A Decade of Surprises from the Anomalous X-ray Pulsars

Details A Decade of Surprises from the Anomalous X-ray Pulsars A Decade of Surprises from the Anomalous X-ray Pulsars

Aug 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006iaujd...2e..61r&link_type=abstract

On the Present and Future of Pulsar Astronomy, 26th meeting of the IAU, Joint Discussion 2, 16-17 August, 2006, Prague, Czech Re

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

A decade ago, the defining characteristics of the Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXPs) included slow spin periods (5-9 s), relatively soft but constant X-ray luminosities in the range of 10^35-10^36 erg/s, and steady spin-down rates. The X-ray luminosities are too large to be powered by pulsar spin-down, and given the lack of evidence for accretion, are thought to be caused by the decay of ~10^14-10^15 G magnetic fields (i.e. the "magnetar" theory as proposed by Thompson and Duncan). Within the past decade, though, detailed X-ray monitoring observations have shown that these sources are anything but "constant" and "steady". Timing noise, glitches, X-ray bursts, and pulse profile and pulsed flux variations are now known to be relatively common in these sources. In addition, at least one recently discovered AXP, XTE J1810-197, is a full-fledged transient object. Detections in the optical and infra-red (including pulsations) and recent hard X-ray observations have complicated our views of their emission mechanisms. Finally, very recent detections of magnetar-like radio pulsars, as well as strong (and transient) radio pulsations from XTE J1810-197, show that these sources are linked (at least in some way) with the much more common radio pulsars.

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