No Arabic abstract
We report on radio observations of five magnetars and two magnetar candidates carried out at 1950 MHz with the Green Bank Telescope in 2006-2007. The data from these observations were searched for periodic emission and bright single pulses. Also, monitoring observations of magnetar 4U0142+61 following its 2006 X-ray bursts were obtained. No radio emission was detected was detected for any of our targets. The non-detections allow us to place luminosity upper limits (at 1950 MHz) of approximately L < 1.60 mJy kpc^2 for periodic emission and L < 7.6 Jy kpc^2 for single pulse emission. These are the most stringent limits yet for the magnetars observed. The resulting luminosity upper limits together with previous results are discussed, as is the importance of further radio observations of radio-loud and radio-quiet magnetars.
Recently, one fast radio burst, FRB 200428, was detected from the Galactic magnetar SGR J1935+2154 during one X-ray burst. This suggests that magnetars can make FRBs. On the other hand, the majority of X-ray bursts from SGR J1935+2154 are not associated with FRBs. One possible reason for such rarity of FRB-SGR-burst associations is that the FRB emission is much more narrowly beamed than the SGR burst emission. If such an interpretation is correct, one would expect to detect radio bursts with viewing angles somewhat outside the narrow emission beam. These slow radio bursts (SRBs) would have broader widths and lower flux densities due to the smaller Doppler factor involved. We derive two closure relations to judge whether a long, less luminous radio burst could be an SRB. The 2.2-s, 308 Jy ms, 111 MHz radio burst detected from SGR J1935+2154 by the BSA LPI radio telescope may be such an SRB. The 2-ms, 60 mJy ms faint burst detected by FAST from the same source could be also an SRB if the corresponding FRB has a narrow spectrum. If the FRB beam is narrow, there should be many more SRBs than FRBs from Galactic magnetars. The lack of detection of abundant SRBs from magnetars would disfavor the hypothesis that all SGR bursts are associated with narrow-beam FRBs.
Axion-like-particles (ALPs) emitted from the core of a magnetar can convert to photons in its magnetosphere. The resulting photon flux is sensitive to the product of $(i)$ the ALP-nucleon coupling $G_{an}$ which controls the production cross section in the core and $(ii)$ the ALP-photon coupling $g_{agamma gamma}$ which controls the conversion in the magnetosphere. We study such emissions in the soft-gamma-ray range (300 keV to 1 MeV), where the ALP spectrum peaks and astrophysical backgrounds from resonant Compton upscattering are expected to be suppressed. Using published quiescent soft-gamma-ray flux upper limits in 5 magnetars obtained with $CGRO$ COMPTEL and $INTEGRAL$ SPI/IBIS/ISGRI, we put limits on the product of the ALP-nucleon and ALP-photon couplings. We also provide a detailed study of the dependence of our results on the magnetar core temperature. We further show projections of our result for future $Fermi$-GBM observations. Our results motivate a program of studying quiescent soft-gamma-ray emission from magnetars with the $Fermi$-GBM.
It is proposed that magnetospheric currents above the surfaces of magnetars radiate coherent emission in analogy to pulsars. Scaling the magnetospheric parameters suggests that the coherent emission from magnetars would emerge in the infra-red or optical.
We investigate the conditions for radio emission in rotating and oscillating magnetars, by focusing on the main physical processes determining the position of their death-lines in the P-dot{P} diagram, i.e. of those lines that separate the regions where the neutron star may be radio-loud or radio-quiet. After using the general relativistic expression for the electromagnetic scalar potential in the magnetar magnetosphere, we find that larger compactness parameters of the star as well as larger inclination angles between the rotation axis and the magnetic moment produce death-lines well above the majority of known magnetars. This is consistent with the observational evidence of no regular radio emission from the magnetars in the frequency range typical for the ordinary pulsars. On the contrary, when oscillations of the magnetar are taken into account, the death-lines shift downward and the conditions necessary for the generation of radio emission in the magnetosphere are met. Present observations showing a close connection between the burst activity of magnetars and the generation of the radio emission in the magnetar magnetosphere are naturally accounted for within our interpretation.
We develop a model for the radio afterglow of the giant flare of SGR 1806-20 arising due to the interaction of magnetically-dominated cloud, an analogue of Solar Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), with the interstellar medium (ISM). The CME is modeled as a spheromak-like configuration. The CME is first advected with the magnetars wind and later interacts with the ISM, creating a strong forward shock and complicated backwards exhaust flow. Using three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations, we study various relative configurations of the magnetic field of the CME with respect to the ISMs magnetic field. We show that the dynamics of the forward shock mostly follows the Sedov-Taylor blastwave, while the internal structure of the shocked medium is considerably modified by the back flow, creating a multiple shock configuration. We calculate synthetic synchrotron emissivity maps and light curves using two assumptions: (i) magnetic field compression; (ii) amplification of the magnetic field at the shock.We find that models with magnetic field amplification account better for the observed radio emission.