A RADIO-LOUD MAGNETAR IN X-RAY QUIESCENCE

By L. Levin, M. Bailes, S. Bates, N. Bhat, M. Burgay, S. Burke-Spolaor, N. D'amico, Simon Johnston, M. Keith, Michael Kramer and 5 more. 2010

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As part of a survey for radio pulsars with the Parkes 64 m telescope, we have discovered PSR J1622−4950, a pulsar with a 4.3 s rotation period. Follow-up observations show that the pulsar has the highest inferred surface magnetic field of the known radio pulsars (B ∼3 × 1014 G), and it exhibits significant timing noise and appears to have an inverted spectrum. Unlike the vast majority of the known pulsar population, PSR J1622−4950 appears to switch off for many hundreds of days and even in its on-state exhibits extreme variability in its flux density. Furthermore, the integrated pulse profile changes shape with epoch. All of these properties are remarkably similar to the only two magnetars previously known to emit radio pulsations. The position of PSR J1622−4950 is coincident with an X-ray source that, unlike the other radio pulsating magnetars, was found to be in quiescence. We conclude that our newly discovered pulsar is a magnetar—the first to be discovered via its radio emission.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ef934f98fc5d844334b553de208204aa51a4fdf1

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Citations in the corpus

NuSTAR DISCOVERY OF A 3.76 s TRANSIENT MAGNETAR NEAR SAGITTARIUS A* (2013, background): “With its detection at radio wavelengths (Eatough et al. 2013b, 2013c), SGR J1745−29 is similar to the transient magnetars 1E 1547−5408 (Camilo et al. 2007), J1622−4950 (Levin et al. 2010), and XTE J1810−197 (Camilo et al. 2006), the only three radio-detected magnetars.”
Observing pulsars and fast transients with LOFAR (2011, background): “This pulsar also shows similarly variable radio emission properties, as seen for the other two “radio magnetars”, though no X-ray burst has been observed (Levin et al. 2010).”
On the origin of a highly dispersed coherent radio burst (2012, background): “Nevertheless, despite the flat spectrum of the pulse, we consider this possibility as, on a pulse-by-pulse basis pulsar spectra can vary dramatically (Kramer et al. 2003), and because the radioemitting magnetars show flat spectra (e.g. Levin et al. (2010) and references therein).”
The glitch-induced identity changes of PSR J1119−6127 (2010, background): “In particular all three have a high degree of linear polarization (Camilo et al. 2007; Kramer et al. 2007; Camilo et al. 2008) and individual pulses from PSR J1810– 197 (Serylak et al. 2009) and J1623–4950 (Levin et al. 2010) show spiky emission similar to that seen in PSR B0656+14 (Weltevrede et al”