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Register a new userA Magnetar-like Outburst from a High-B Radio Pulsar
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Radio pulsars are believed to have their emission powered by the loss of rotational kinetic energy. By contrast, magnetars show intense X-ray and gamma-ray radiation whose luminosity greatly exceeds that due to spin-down and is believed to be powered by intense internal magnetic fields. A basic prediction of this picture is that radio pulsars of high magnetic field should show magnetar-like emission. Here we report on a magnetar-like X-ray outburst from the radio pulsar PSR J1119-6127, heralded by two short bright X-ray bursts on 2016 July 27 and 28 (Kennea et al. 2016; Younes et al. 2016). Using Target-of-Opportunity data from the Swift X-ray Telescope and NuSTAR, we show that this pulsars flux has brightened by a factor of > 160 in the 0.5-10 keV band, and its previously soft X-ray spectrum has undergone a strong hardening, with strong pulsations appearing for the first time above 2.5 keV, with phase-averaged emission detectable up to 25 keV. By comparing Swift-XRT and NuSTAR timing data with a pre-outburst ephemeris derived from Fermi Large Area Telescope data, we find that the source has contemporaneously undergone a large spin-up glitch of amplitude df/f = 5.74(8) E-6. The collection of phenomena observed thus far in this outburst strongly mirrors those in most magnetar outbursts and provides an unambiguous connection between the radio pulsar and magnetar populations.
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Rotation-powered pulsars and magnetars are two different observational manifestations of neutron stars: rotation powered pulsars are rapidly spinning objects that are mostly observed as pulsating radio sources, while magnetars, neutron stars with the highest known magnetic fields, often emit short-duration X-ray bursts. Here we report simultaneous observations of the high-magnetic-field radio pulsar PSR J1119-6127 at X-ray, with XMM-Newton & NuSTAR, and at radio energies with Parkes radio telescope, during a period of magnetar-like bursts. The rotationally powered radio emission shuts off coincident with the occurrence of multiple X-ray bursts, and recovers on a time scale of ~70 seconds. These observations of related radio and X-ray phenomena further solidify the connection between radio pulsars and magnetars, and suggest that the pair plasma produced in bursts can disrupt the acceleration mechanism of radio emitting particles.
Asteroids orbiting into the highly magnetized and highly relativistic wind of a pulsar offer a favourable configuration for repeating fast radio bursts (FRB). The body in direct contact with the wind develops a trail formed of a stationary Alfven wave, called an textit{Alfven wing}. When an element of wind crosses the Alfven wing, it sees a rotation of the ambient magnetic field that can cause radio-wave instabilities. In the observers reference frame, the waves are collimated in a very narrow range of directions, and they have an extremely high intensity. A previous work, published in 2014, showed that planets orbiting a pulsar can cause FRB when they pass in our line of sight. We predicted periodic FRB. Since then random FRB repeaters have been discovered. We present an upgrade of this theory where repeaters can be explained by the interaction of smaller bodies with a pulsar wind. Considering the properties of relativistic Alfven wings attached to a body in the pulsar wind, and taking thermal consideration into account we conduct a parametric study. We find that FRBs, including the Lorimer burst (30 Jy), can be explained by small size pulsar companions (1 to 10 km) between 0.03 and 1 AU from a highly magnetized millisecond pulsar. Some sets of parameters are also compatible with a magnetar. Our model is compatible with the high rotation measure of FRB121102. The bunched timing of the FRBs is the consequence of a moderate wind turbulence. As asteroid belt composed of less than 200 bodies would suffice for the FRB occurrence rate measured with FRB121102. This model, after the present upgrade, is compatible with the properties discovered since its first publication in 2014, when repeating FRB were still unknown. It is based on standard physics, and on common astrophysical objects that can be found in any kind of galaxy. It requires $10^{10}$ times less power than (common) isotropic-emission FRB models.
Magnetars are highly magnetized young neutron stars that occasionally produce enormous bursts and flares of X-rays and gamma-rays. Of the approximately thirty magnetars currently known in our Galaxy and Magellanic Clouds, five have exhibited transient radio pulsations. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-duration bursts of radio waves arriving from cosmological distances. Some have been seen to repeat. A leading model for repeating FRBs is that they are extragalactic magnetars, powered by their intense magnetic fields. However, a challenge to this model has been that FRBs must have radio luminosities many orders of magnitude larger than those seen from known Galactic magnetars. Here we report the detection of an extremely intense radio burst from the Galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2154 using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) FRB project. The fluence of this two-component bright radio burst and the estimated distance to SGR 1935+2154 together imply a 400-800 MHz burst energy of $sim 3 times 10^{34}$ erg, which is three orders of magnitude brighter than those of any radio-emitting magnetar detected thus far. Such a burst coming from a nearby galaxy would be indistinguishable from a typical FRB. This event thus bridges a large fraction of the radio energy gap between the population of Galactic magnetars and FRBs, strongly supporting the notion that magnetars are the origin of at least some FRBs.
The rotation-powered pulsar PSR J1846-0258 in the supernova remnant Kes 75 was recently shown to have exhibited magnetar-like X-ray bursts in mid-2006. Radio emission has not yet been observed from this source, but other magnetar-like sources have exhibited transient radio emission following X-ray bursts. We report on a deep 1.9 GHz radio observation of PSR J1846-0258 with the 100-m Green Bank Telescope in late 2007 designed to search for radio pulsations or bursts from this target. We have also analyzed three shorter serendipitous 1.4 GHz radio observations of the source taken with the 64-m Parkes telescope during the 2006 bursting period. We detected no radio emission from PSR J1846-0258 in either the Green Bank or Parkes datasets. We place an upper limit of 4.9 mu Jy on coherent pulsed emission from PSR J1846-0258 based on the 2007 November 2 observation, and an upper limit of 27 mu Jy around the time of the X-ray bursts. Serendipitously, we observed radio pulses from the nearby RRAT J1846-02, and place a 3sigma confidence level upper limit on its period derivative of 1.7 * 10^{-13}, implying its surface dipole magnetic field is less than 2.6 * 10^{13} G.
We report on the 2020 reactivation of the energetic high-magnetic field pulsar PSR J1846-0258 and its pulsar wind nebula (PWN) after 14 years of quiescence with new Chandra and Green Bank Telescope observations. The emission of short-duration bursts from J1846-0258 was accompanied by an enhancement of X-ray persistent flux and significant spectral softening, similar to those observed during its first bursting episode in 2006. The 2020 pulsar spectrum is described by a powerlaw model with a photon index Gamma=1.7pm0.3 in comparison to a Gamma=1.2pm0.1 before outburst and shows evidence of an emerging thermal component with blackbody temperature kT=0.7pm0.1 keV. The 0.5--10 keV unabsorbed flux increased from 5.4e-12 erg/cm^2/s in quiescence to 1.3e-11 erg/cm^2/s following the outburst. We did not detect any radio emission from the pulsar at 2 GHz and place an upper limit of 7.1 uJy and 55 mJy for the coherent pulsed emission and single-pulses, respectively. The 2020 PWN spectrum, characterized by a photon index of 1.92pm0.04 and X-ray luminosity of 1.2e-35 erg/s at a distance of 5.8~kpc, is consistent with those observed before the outburst. An analysis of regions closer to the pulsar shows small-scale time variabilities and brightness changes over the 20-yr period from 2000 to 2020, while the photon indices did not change. We conclude that the outburst in PSR J1846-0258 is a combination of crustal and magnetospheric effects, with no significant burst-induced variability in its PWN based on the current observations.
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