Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Rea, N
• Esposito, P
• Turolla, R
• Israel, G.L
• Zane, S
• Stella, L
• Mereghetti, S
• Tiengo, A
• Götz, D
• Göğüş, E
• Kouveliotou, C

Titel

Low-Magnetic-Field Soft Gamma Repeater

Ist Teil von

• Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 2010-11, Vol.330 (6006), p.944-946

Ort / Verlag

Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2010

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Soft gamma repeaters (SGRs) and anomalous x-ray pulsars form a rapidly increasing group of x-ray sources exhibiting sporadic emission of short bursts. They are believed to be magnetars, that is, neutron stars powered by extreme magnetic fields, B approximately 10¹⁴ to 10¹⁵ gauss. We report on a soft gamma repeater with low magnetic field, SGR 0418+5729, recently detected after it emitted bursts similar to those of magnetars. X-ray observations show that its dipolar magnetic field cannot be greater than 7.5 x 10¹² gauss, well in the range of ordinary radio pulsars, implying that a high surface dipolar magnetic field is not necessarily required for magnetar-like activity. The magnetar population may thus include objects with a wider range of B-field strengths, ages, and evolutionary stages than observed so far.