The Highest Magnetic Fields in the Universe: Anomalous X-Ray Pulsars and Soft Gamma-ray Repeaters
Abstract
Description
In the last few years it has been recognized that two apparently distinct classes of peculiar high-energy sources are actually related and can be explained as young neutron stars with magnetic fields as high as 10e14 - 10e15 Gauss. One of these ''magnetars'', SGR 1806-20, has recently emitted the most powerful giant flare ever recorded. The high-energy observations of SGR 1806-20 carried out with XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL in the past two years showed a long term trend of increasing activity preceding the 2004 December 27 event. INTEGRAL data of this giant flare provided unique evidence for hard X-ray emission lasting about one hour after the burst onset, possibly due to the interaction of mildly relativistic ejecta with the circumstellar medium.
To appear in the proceedings of the 40th Rencontres de Moriond "Very High Energy Phenomena in the Universe" - La Thuile, Italy (March 12-19, 2005) - 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 table
To appear in the proceedings of the 40th Rencontres de Moriond "Very High Energy Phenomena in the Universe" - La Thuile, Italy (March 12-19, 2005) - 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 table