The Anomalous X-ray Pulsars
Abstract
The Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXPs) are a small class of pulsars with spin periods in the 6-12 s range, very soft X-ray spectra, secular spin down on time scales of ~10^3-10^5 years, and lack of bright optical counterparts. Two, possibly three, of them are close to the centre of shell-like supernova remnants. AXPs are one of the most enigmatic classes of galactic high-energy sources. Isolated neutron stars powered by the loss of rotational energy can be excluded on energetic grounds. The models based on neutron stars involve either accretion (perhaps from a fossil disk around an isolated neutron star) or the decay of a very strong magnetic field (10^14-10^15 G). We review the models and the observational properties of AXPs, including recent XMM-Newton and Chandra observations. We also present some unpublished ASCA data.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0205122,
title = {The Anomalous X-ray Pulsars},
author = {S. Mereghetti and L. Chiarlone and G. L. Israel and L. Stella},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0205122},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
15 pages, latex, 5 figures, 6 tables - Invited review to appear in "Neutron Stars, Pulsars and Supernova Remnants" (Proceedings of the 270. WE-Heraeus-Seminar, Bad Honnef, January 2002), eds. W. Becker, H.Lesch and J.Tr=FCmper, MPE-Report in press