Magnetars in the afterglow era

Authors:
D. Eichler,
Y. Lyubarsky,
C. Thompson,
P.Woods

Comments: 8 pages, 1 fig. To appear in Proc. Marsala workshop “Pulsars, AXPs
and SGRs observed with BeppoSAX and other observatories”

The X-ray afterglow that is observed following large flares on magnetars can
be accurately fit by simple and quantitative theoretical models: The long term
afterglow, lasting of order weeks, can be understood as thermal radiation of a
heated neutron star crust that is re-scattered in the magnetosphere. Short term
afterglow is well fit by the cooling of a non-degenerate, pair-rich layer,
which gradually shrinks and releases heat to a pair-free zone above it.
Measurements of persistent optical and infrared emission directly probe long
lived currents in the magnetosphere which are a likely source of collective
plasma emission. The superstrong magnetic field plays an important role in
generating these various emissions, and previous inference of its strength in
magnetars is supported by the good fits with observation.

References and citations for this submission:

SLAC-SPIRES HEP (refers to ,
cited by, arXiv reformatted)