Polarized x-rays from a magnetar
Abstract
We report on the first detection of linearly polarized x-ray emission from an ultra-magnetized neutron star with the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). The IXPE 35 observations of the anomalous x-ray pulsar 4U 0142+61 reveal a linear polarization degree of throughout the IXPE 2--8 keV band. We detect a substantial variation of the polarization with energy: the degree is at 2--4 keV and at 5.5--8 keV, while it drops below the instrumental sensitivity around 4--5 keV, where the polarization angle swings by . The IXPE observations give us completely new information about the properties of the neutron star surface and magnetosphere and lend further support to the presence of the quantum mechanical effect of vacuum birefringence.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2205.08898,
title = {Polarized x-rays from a magnetar},
author = {Roberto Taverna and Roberto Turolla and Fabio Muleri and Jeremy Heyl and Silvia Zane and Luca Baldini and Denis González Caniulef and Matteo Bachetti and John Rankin and Ilaria Caiazzo and Niccolò Di Lalla and Victor Doroshenko and Manel Errando and Ephraim Gau and Demet Kırmızıbayrak and Henric Krawczynski and Michela Negro and Mason Ng and Nicola Omodei and Toru Tamagawa and Keisuke Uchiyama and Martin C. Weisskopf and Ivan Agudo and Lucio A. Antonelli and Wayne H. Baumgartner and Ronaldo Bellazzini and Stefano Bianchi and Stephen D. Bongiorno and Raffaella Bonino and Alessandro Brez and Niccolò Bucciantini and Fiamma Capitanio and Simone Castellano and Elisabetta Cavazzuti and Stefano Ciprini and Enrico Costa and Alessandra De Rosa and Ettore Del Monte and Laura Di Gesu and Alessandro Di Marco and Immacolata Donnarumma and Michal Dovčiak and Steven R. Ehlert and Teruaki Enoto and Yuri Evangelista and Sergio Fabiani and Riccardo Ferrazzoli and Javier A. Garcia and Shuichi Gunji and Kiyoshi Hayashida and Wataru Iwakiri and Svetlana G. Jorstad and Vladimir Karas and Takao Kitaguchi and Jeffery J. Kolodziejczak and Fabio La Monaca and Luca Latronico and Ioannis Liodakis and Simone Maldera and Alberto Manfreda and Frédéric Marin and Andrea Marinucci and Alan P. Marscher and Herman L. Marshall and Giorgio Matt and Ikuyuki Mitsuishi and Tsunefumi Mizuno and Stephen C. -Y. Ng and Stephen L. O'Dell and Chiara Oppedisano and Alessandro Papitto and George G. Pavlov and Abel L. Peirson and Matteo Perri and Melissa Pesce-Rollins and Maura Pilia and Andrea Possenti and Juri Poutanen and Simonetta Puccetti and Brian D. Ramsey and Ajay Ratheesh and Roger W. Romani and Carmelo Sgrò and Patrick Slane and Paolo Soffitta and Gloria Spandre and Fabrizio Tavecchio and Yuzuru Tawara and Allyn F. Tennant and Nicolas E. Thomas and Francesco Tombesi and Alessio Trois and Sergey Tsygankov and Jacco Vink and Kinwah Wu and Fei Xie},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.08898},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
32 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables