Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2023
Volume 68, Number 6
Minneapolis, Minnesota (Apr 15-18)
Virtual (Apr 24-26); Time Zone: Central Time
Session WW04: V: Magnetars: the Most Magnetic Stars in the CosmosInvited
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Sponsoring Units: DAP Chair: Chryssa Kouveliotou, George Washington University Room: Virtual Room 4 |
Wednesday, April 26, 2023 8:00AM - 8:30AM |
WW04.00001: Magnetars, a Cosmic Physics Laboratory Invited Speaker: George Younes Magnetars form a sub-population within the isolated neutron star zoo, occupying a unique parameter space in the famed period-period derivative diagram. Assuming magnetic dipole radiation, their inferred magnetic fields are on average two orders of magnitude larger than regular pulsars. This immense reservoir of magnetic energy fuels their bright persistent surface thermal, and magnetospheric non-thermal X-ray emission. It is also the driver of sub-second soft gamma-ray flashes, giant flares (brightest X-ray events detected, after the sun), and years-long outbursts during which extreme variability is observed; altered spectral and pulse shapes, glitching activity, strong timing noise, appearance of radio activity, among other attributes. Additionally, the large energy stock of magnetars is commonly invoked as a power source for other extreme transient phenomena, such as gamma-ray bursts, superluminous supernovae, ultra-luminous X-ray sources, and finally fast radio bursts (FRBs). Smoking-gun evidence for the latter occurred on 2020 April 28, when an FRB-like radio burst was simultaneously detected with an X-ray burst from the Galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2143. All these observational properties relate to the evolution of the magnetic-field in magnetars, the stress this imparts onto the star solid crust, and the way in which that impacts the exterior through magnetic field twists. In this talk, I will summarize the latest high energy observational results from a few Galactic magnetars, their relation to FRBs, and their strength in providing great insight into crustal physics, plasma physics, and radiative processes in high B-field regime. |
Wednesday, April 26, 2023 8:30AM - 9:00AM |
WW04.00002: Polarised Thermal X-ray Emission from Neutron Stars and Magnetars Invited Speaker: Silvia Zane Over the recent years the scientific interest around Xray polarimetry has blossomed, thanks to the advent of the first instruments conceived to perform systematically these measurements in celestial sources. |
Wednesday, April 26, 2023 9:00AM - 9:30AM |
WW04.00003: Magnetar Giant Flares Masquerading as Gamma-Ray Bursts Invited Speaker: Oliver J Roberts Magnetars are slowly-rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields (1013-15 G), episodically emitting 100 ms long X-ray bursts with energies of about 1040-41 erg. Rarely, they produce extremely bright, energetic giant flares that begin with a short (200 ms) intense flash, followed by fainter emission lasting several minutes that is modulated by the magnetar spin period (typically 2-12 s), thus confirming their origin. Over the last 40 years, only three such flares have been observed within our local galactic group, which all suffered from instrumental saturation due to their extreme intensity. It has been proposed, that extragalactic giant flares likely constitute a subset of short gamma-ray bursts, noting that the sensitivity of current instrumentation prevents us from detecting the pulsating tail to distances slightly beyond the Magellanic clouds. However, their initial bright flash is readily observable out to distances of < 60 Mpc. In this talk, X- and gamma-ray observations of bright transient called “GRB200415A”, will be presented. We evaluate the spectral and temporal behavior of this event, which provide tantalizing clues as to the nature of the source. The implications of this work for future studies of these high-energy studies, will also be provided. |
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