Signatures of magnetar central engines in short GRB light curves

By A. Rowlinson, P. O’Brien, B. Metzger, N. Tanvir, A. Levan. 2013

401 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A significant fraction of the long gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) in the Swift sample have a plateau phase showing evidence of ongoing energy injection. We suggest that many short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) detected by the Swift satellite also show evidence of energy injection. Explaining this observation within the typical SGRB progenitor model is challenging as late time accretion, often used to explain plateaus in LGRBs, is likely to be absent from the SGRB population. Alternatively, it is predicted that the remnant of neutron star–neutron star mergers may not collapse immediately to a black hole (or even collapse at all), forming instead an unstable millisecond pulsar (magnetar) which powers a plateau phase in the X-ray light curve. By fitting the magnetar model to all of the Swift SGRBs observed until 2012 May, we find that about half can be clearly fitted with a magnetar plateau phase while the rest are consistent with forming a magnetar but the data are insufficient to prove a plateau phase. More data, both at early times and a larger sample, are required to confirm this. This model can be tested by detecting the gravitational wave emission from events using the next generation gravitational wave observatories.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d5ffc23ff400b639620754e05113f315da5d43dc

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. E. Berger
4. Pawan Kumar
5. B. Margalit
6. P. Lasky
7. N. Langer
8. W. Lei

Citations in the corpus

• BRIGHT “MERGER-NOVA” FROM THE REMNANT OF A NEUTRON STAR BINARY MERGER: A SIGNATURE OF A NEWLY BORN, MASSIVE, MILLISECOND MAGNETAR (2013, methodology): “This is indirectly supported by the fact that some SGRBs are followed by an X-ray plateau with an abrupt ending, which is best interpreted as emission from a spinning down magnetar (e.g. Rowlinson et al. 2010, 2013).”
• INTEGRAL Detection of the First Prompt Gamma-Ray Signal Coincident with the Gravitational-wave Event GW170817 (2017, background): “It has been suggested that a newborn magnetar is responsible for part of the afterglow emission (e.g., Rowlinson et al. 2013).”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “Such a magnetar signature also shows up in several short GRBs (e.g. Rowlinson et al., 2010, 2013).”
• The birth of black holes: neutron star collapse times, gamma-ray bursts and fast radio bursts (2014, methodology): “The observed rest-frame collapse times from Rowlinson et al. (2013), shown in Fig.”
• Short-Duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (2013, background): “…support its large mass. Thistransition could in principle lead to an observable signature; for example, it has been recently claimed that short-lived X-ray plateaus in some short GRBs are due to magnetar spin-down energy i jection and the subsequent collapse to a black hole (Rowlinson et al. 2013).”
• Formation of Double Neutron Star Systems (2017, background): “…(102 − 105 s) X-ray activity in a large fraction of sGRB events, which is indicative of a continuous energy release from a central engine on timescales orders of magnitude larger than the typical torus accretion timescale (Rowlinson et al. 2010, 2013; Gompertz et al. 2013, 2014; Lü et al. 2015).”
• Optical and X-ray emission from stable millisecond magnetars formed from the merger of binary neutron stars (2013, background): “Other short GRBs are accompanied by X-ray emission with plateau-like light curve (e.g., Rowlinson et al. 2013).”
• THE MILLISECOND MAGNETAR CENTRAL ENGINE IN SHORT GRBs (2015, methodology): “Figure 10b presents an anti-correlation between Etotal,iso and tcol. logEtotal,iso,52 = (−1.08± 0.27) log tcol,2 + (0.11± 0.18) 11 The derived magnetar parameters of most GRBs are slightly different from those derived by Rowlinson et al. (2013).”
• A POSSIBLE CONNECTION BETWEEN FAST RADIO BURSTS AND GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2013, background): “For short GRBs, it seems that the chance of catching an internal plateau is much higher (Rowlinson et al. 2013), although the end of plateau is earlier (100s of seconds).”
• FORMATION OF STABLE MAGNETARS FROM BINARY NEUTRON STAR MERGERS (2013, methodology): “In particular, Rowlinson et al. (2013) found that several of the SGRBs that show a plateau phase in the X-ray lightcurve may 1 JILA, University of Colorado and National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO 80309, USA 2 JILA and Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences,…”
• Constraining the Maximum Mass of Neutron Stars from Multi-messenger Observations of GW170817 (2017, background): “…GRBs may be powered by stronglymagnetized rapidly-rotating NSs. NS GRB engines have also been suggested on grounds of the ‘extended’ X-ray emission observed after some short GRBs (e.g. Metzger et al. 2008b; Rowlinson et al. 2013), emission which is difficult to interpret within the BH engine model.”