Anomalous X-Ray Pulsars and Soft Gamma-Ray Repeaters in Supernova Remnants

By B. Gaensler, P. Slane, E. Gotthelf, G. Vasisht. 2001

148 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Important constraints on the properties of the anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs) and soft gamma-ray repeaters (SGRs) can be provided by their associations with supernova remnants (SNRs). We have made a radio search for SNRs toward the AXPs RX J170849-400910 and 4U 0142+61. We find that the former lies near a possible new SNR with which it is unlikely to be physically associated, but we see no SNR in the vicinity of the latter. We review all claimed pairings between AXPs and SNRs; the three convincing associations imply that AXPs are young (<10 000 yr) neutron stars with low projected space velocities (<500 km s-1). Contrary to previous claims, we find no evidence that the density of the ambient medium around AXPs is higher than that in the vicinity of radio pulsars. Furthermore, the nondetection of radio emission from AXPs does not imply that these sources are radio-silent. We also review claimed associations between SGRs and SNRs. We find none of these associations to be convincing, consistent with a scenario in which SGRs and AXPs are both populations of high-field neutron stars ("magnetars") but the SGRs are an older or longer-lived group of objects than are the AXPs. If the SGR-SNR associations are shown to be valid, then SGRs must be high-velocity objects and most likely represent a different class of source to the AXPs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/520a5cbee3a68cacec419d6666f3eace665b1be1

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Michael Kramer
2. E. Berger
3. R. Manchester
4. G. Hobbs
5. Bing Zhang
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In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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Citations in the corpus

• Unifying the observational diversity of isolated neutron stars via magneto-thermal evolution models. (2013, background): “We present in Table 1 all the sources in our sample, with their well established associations (Gaensler et al. 2001), the known timing properties with the characteristic age and the alternative estimate for the age, when available.”
• The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey – II. Discovery and timing of 120 pulsars (2002, background): “We note that given the trend toward pulse narrowing with increasing spin period (Gould 1994), the fact that no radio counterparts of AXPs, which also lie above this boundary, have been detected, may be due to their radio beams not intersecting our line of sight (Gaensler et al. 2001).”
• Magnetars in the Metagalaxy: An Origin for Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays in the Nearby Universe (2002, result): “I assume that all galaxies that have core-collapse SNe form magnetars with a birthrate m comparable to that in our own Galaxy, where 10 3 yr 1 > m > 10 5 yr 1 (Gaensler et al. 2001), and that some are born with high angular velocities, i 104 s 1.”
• Short-hard gamma-ray bursts (2007, background): “SGRs are thought to be produced by core collapse of young stars and to be associated with star forming regions, as supported by the Galactic SGRs (e.g., Gaensler et al. , 2001).”
• A RADIO-LOUD MAGNETAR IN X-RAY QUIESCENCE (2010, background): “Indeed, 5 of the 9 AXPs and at least 1 of the 5 SGRs are located within SNRs (Mereghetti 2008; Gaensler et al. 2001).”
• Pan-STARRS1 DISCOVERY OF TWO ULTRALUMINOUS SUPERNOVAE AT z ≈ 0.9 (2011, background): “Even Galactic magnetars are typically not detected at radio wavelengths (e.g., Gaensler et al. 2001; Burgay et al. 2006), and the new-born magnetars proposed by KB10 will additionally suffer free-free absorption from the ionized ejecta in which they are embedded.”
• Discovery of Luminous Pulsed Hard X-Ray Emission from Anomalous X-Ray Pulsars 1RXS J1708–4009, 4U 0142+61, and 1E 2259+586 by INTEGRAL and RXTE (2006, background): “A search for radio emission at 1.4 GHz from 1RXS J1708 4009 only yielded a 5 upper limit of 3 mJy at the position of the AXP (Gaensler et al. 2001).”