A highly magnetized neutron star with fields a thousand times stronger than those of radio pulsars. There are two sub-classes of magnetars, anomalous X-Ray pulsar (AXP)s and soft gamma repeater (SGR)s
, that were thought for many years to be separate and unrelated objects. In fact SGRs and AXPs are both neutron stars possessing magnetic fields of unprecedented strength of 10^14 - 10^16 G, and that show both steady X-ray pulsations as well as soft gamma-ray bursts. Their inferred steady X-ray luminosities are about one hundred times higher than their spin-down luminosities, requiring a source of power well beyond the magnetic dipole spin-down that powers rotation-powered pulsar (RPP)s. New high-energy components discovered in the spectra of a number of AXPs and SGRs require non-thermal particle acceleration and look very similar to high-energy spectral components of young rotation-powered pulsars.
A highly magnetized neutron star with fields a thousand times stronger than those of radio pulsars. There are two sub-classes of magnetars, anomalous X-Ray pulsar (AXP)s and soft gamma repeater (SGR)s
, that were thought for many years to be separate and unrelated objects. In fact SGRs and AXPs are both neutron stars possessing magnetic fields of unprecedented strength of 10^14 - 10^16 G, and that show both steady X-ray pulsations as well as soft gamma-ray bursts. Their inferred steady X-ray luminosities are about one hundred times higher than their spin-down luminosities, requiring a source of power well beyond the magnetic dipole spin-down that powers rotation-powered pulsar (RPP)s. New high-energy components discovered in the spectra of a number of AXPs and SGRs require non-thermal particle acceleration and look very similar to high-energy spectral components of young rotation-powered pulsars.
A highly magnetized neutron star with fields a thousand times stronger than those of radio pulsars. There are two sub-classes of magnetars, anomalous X-Ray pulsar (AXP)s and soft gamma repeater (SGR)s
, that were thought for many years to be separate and unrelated objects. In fact SGRs and AXPs are both neutron stars possessing magnetic fields of unprecedented strength of 10^14 - 10^16 G, and that show both steady X-ray pulsations as well as soft gamma-ray bursts. Their inferred steady X-ray luminosities are about one hundred times higher than their spin-down luminosities, requiring a source of power well beyond the magnetic dipole spin-down that powers rotation-powered pulsar (RPP)s. New high-energy components discovered in the spectra of a number of AXPs and SGRs require non-thermal particle acceleration and look very similar to high-energy spectral components of young rotation-powered pulsars.