NuSTAR discovery of a 3.76-second transient magnetar near Sagittarius A*
Abstract
We report the discovery of 3.76-s pulsations from a new burst source near Sgr A* observed by the NuSTAR Observatory. The strong signal from SGR J1745-29 presents a complex pulse profile modulated with pulsed fraction 27+/-3 % in the 3-10 keV band. Two observations spaced 9 days apart yield a spin-down rate of Pdot = (6.5+/-1.4)x10^{-12}. This implies a magnetic field B = 1.6x10^14 G, spin-down power Edot = 5x10^33 erg/s, and characteristic age P/2Pdot = 9x10^3 yr, for the rotating dipole model. However, the current Pdot may be erratic, especially during outburst. The flux and modulation remained steady during the observations and the 3-79 keV spectrum is well fitted by a combined blackbody plus power-law model with temperature kT_BB = 0.96+/-0.02 keV and photon index = 1.5+/-0.4, respectively. The neutral hydrogen column density (nH ~ 1.4x10^23 cm^{-2}) measured by NuSTAR and Swift suggests that SGR J1745-29 is located at or near the Galactic Center. The lack of an X-ray counterpart in the published Chandra survey catalog sets a quiescent 2-8 keV luminosity limit of Lx ~< 10^32 erg/s. The bursting, timing, and spectral properties indicate a transient magnetar undergoing an outburst with 2-79 keV luminosity up to 3.5x10^35 erg/s for a distance of 8 kpc. SGR J1745-29 joins a growing subclass of transient magnetars, indicating that many magnetars in quiescence remain undetected in the X-ray band or have been detected as high-B radio pulsars. The peculiar location of SGR J1745-29 has important implications for the formation and dynamics of neutron stars in the Galactic Center region.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1305.1945,
title = {NuSTAR discovery of a 3.76-second transient magnetar near Sagittarius A*},
author = {Kaya Mori and Eric V. Gotthelf and Shuo Zhang and Hongjun An and Frederick K. Baganoff and Nicolas M. Barriere and Andrei Beloborodov and Steven E. Boggs and Finn E. Christensen and William W. Craig and Francois Dufour and Brian W. Grefenstette and Charles J. Hailey and Fiona Anne Harrison and Jaesub Hong and Victoria M. Kaspi and Jamie A. Kennea and Kristin K. Madsen and Craig B. Markwardt and Melania Nynka and Daniel Stern and John Tomsick and William Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1305.1945},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
accepted to ApJ letter