# Discovery of a magnetar associated with the Soft Gamma Repeater SGR 1900+14

## 1 Introduction

Soft-gamma repeater sources (SGRs) were recognized as a new class of objects in the late 80’s (Atteia et al. (1987); Laros et al. (1987); Kouveliotou et al. (1987)). To date, only four SGRs are confirmed; a fifth SGR source may have been detected twice (Hurley et al. (1997); Kouveliotou et al. (1997); Smith et al (1997)) but its existence is not yet firmly established. What distinguishes these transient soft $`\gamma `$ray bursters from the ‘classic’ $`\gamma `$ray burst sources is their recurrence and the much softer spectra of their bursts. SGRs undergo random intervals of intense activity, during which they emit bunches of up to hundreds of very short, low-energy bursts. The bursts vary in duration and temporal structure from simple, single pulses lasting less than 10 ms (Kouveliotou (1995)), to long, highly complex events that comprise over 40 very short subpulses each lasting tens of ms (Kouveliotou et al. 1998b ; Hurley et al. 1998d ). The SGR burst arrival times seem to be distributed lognormally, similar to the distribution of earthquakes (Cheng et al. (1996); Hurley et al. (1995)).

Three SGRs have firm associations, based on positional coincidences, with supernova remnants (SNRs). The position of SGR $`1900+14`$, has only recently been determined with sufficient accuracy (Hurley et al. 1998d ) to establish that it lies close to the SNR G $`42.8+0.6`$, whose association with SGR $`1900+14`$ was suggested earlier (Kouveliotou et al. (1994); Hurley et al. (1994); Vasisht et al. (1994)). The SGR/SNR associations indicate that SGRs are neutron stars, a conjecture strongly supported by the detection of a three-minute train of 8 s pulsations following the famous March 5, 1979 event from SGR $`052666`$ (Mazets et al. (1979)).

Searches for pulsed emission in the SGR persistent flux were finally successful when observations of SGR $`180620`$ with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE ) in November 1996 revealed a 7.47 s X-ray pulsar (Kouveliotou et al. 1998a ). RXTE observations of the newly discovered SGR $`162147`$ (Kouveliotou et al. 1998c ) indicated weak evidence of 6.7 s pulsations from the source (Dieters et al. (1998)). Finally, in recent observations (April 1998) of SGR $`1900+14`$ Hurley et al. (1998e) detected pulsed emission with 5.16 s period. The pulsations of SGR $`180620`$ show a secular spindown. As argued by Kouveliotou et al. (1998) this spindown is due to magnetic dipole radiation; the corresponding dipolar component of the magnetic field of SGR $`180620`$ exceeds $`10^{14}`$ G, thus establishing SGRs as ‘magnetars’ (Duncan & Thompson (1992); Thompson & Duncan (1995)).

We report the results of observations with RXTE obtained soon after the reactivation of the source was detected with the Burst And Transient Source Experiment (BATSE ) on CGRO and Ulysses in May 1998 (Hurley et al. 1998a ; Kouveliotou et al. 1998b ). Additional observations were obtained after the recent extraordinary source activity of August 1998 (Remillard et al. (1998)), when it emitted several events, one similar to the March 5, 1979 event (Cline et al. (1998); Hurley et al. 1998c ; Feroci et al. (1998)). During these observations we detected the 5.16 s pulse period (Hurley et al. 1998b ; Hurley et al. 1998e ), and found that it shows a secular spin-down at a rate similar to that observed for SGR $`180620`$ (Kouveliotou et al. 1998d ). The great similarities between SGRs indicate that the causes of the spin-down of the pulsations in SGR $`1900+14`$ and SGR $`180620`$ are the same, i.e., SGR $`1900+14`$ is also a magnetar; its dipolar magnetic field strength is $`28\times 10^{14}`$ G.

## 2 RXTE Observations

### 2.1 The May 1998 Observation

We observed SGR $`1900+14`$ between May 31 and June 9, 1998 for a total of 41.7 ks on source<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1The start and end times of the individual observations can be found at http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov.. After excluding all bursts from the time series, the data were energy-selected (2-20 keV), barycentered and binned at 0.25 s resolution. We calculated a fast-Fourier power spectrum of the resulting light curve, searching between 0-2.0 Hz for the 5.158975(7) s period reported for SGR $`1900+14`$ from the ASCA data (Hurley et al. 1998e ). Figure 1a shows the Power Density Spectrum (PDS) of the FFT; we can clearly see the fundamental period at 5.159142(3) s (0.193831 Hz) ($`JD2450970.5`$) and its first, second and third harmonics. The chance probability of detecting this signal at the SGR $`1900+14`$ period is less than $`3\times 10^{30}`$. This number is derived after we averaged the power of the fundamental and the three harmonics between $`01.0`$ Hz, taking into account the number of trials. We do not find significant power at any other frequency; in particular, we do not detect signal at the 89.17 s (0.011 Hz) period from the X-ray pulsar XTE J$`1906+09`$ reported earlier (Marsden et al. (1998)) in the error box of SGR $`1900+14`$ .

Figure 2a shows the epoch-folded PCA pulse profile; it is very similar to the profile from the ASCA data obtained roughly a month earlier (Hurley et al. 1998e ), although the energy ranges are not identical (the ASCA range is 2-10 keV). The two periods differ significantly; we estimate the period derivative between the ASCA and RXTE observations to be $`\dot{P}=5.44(24)\times 10^{11}`$ s/s. Using a pulse folding analysis on the PCA data alone, in which the period is assumed to be given by $`P=P_0+\dot{P}t`$, we find that during the 10 days of the PCA observations a significant change of the period occured. The best fit is $`\dot{P}=(1.10\pm 0.17)\times 10^{10}`$ s/s. We discuss the difference between the two $`\dot{P}`$ values in Section 3.

### 2.2 The August 1998 Observation

SGR $`1900+14`$ started triggering BATSE again on August 28, 1998. Prior to this first trigger, the RXTE /All Sky Monitor had detected a rising transient source from the same direction as SGR $`1900+14`$ (Remillard et al. (1998)). In addition, the Ulysses and KONUS-WIND  spacecraft recorded an extremely intense event on 27 August, 1998, which was very similar to the March 5, 1979 event (Cline et al. (1998); Hurley et al. 1998c ); during this event the source was occulted by the Earth for BATSE (Kouveliotou et al. 1998e ). A new series of ToO observations was initiated with RXTE <sup>2</sup><sup>2</sup>2A listing of the times of these observations can be found in http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov.. We have analyzed 2.5 ks of on source data obtained on August 28, 1998. From a pulse timing analysis we find the pulsar period to be $`P=5.160199(2)`$ s (on $`JD2451056.5`$); the $`\dot{P}`$ during the August 1998 observation is $`1.14(23)\times 10^{10}`$ s/s. Figure 1b shows the PDS of the FFT; the fundamental and the first harmonic dominate this spectrum. The average $`\dot{P}`$ between the first and second RXTE observations is $`1.406(5)\times 10^{10}`$ s/s, 2.6 times the rate between the ASCA and the first RXTE observation.

The folded pulse profiles obtained during 1998 May and August are clearly different (see Fig. 2b), although they cover the same energy range; the August 1998 profile is also different from that obtained with ASCA . This is reminiscent of SGR $`180620`$ (Kouveliotou et al. 1998a ), for which we observed a spiky pulse profile with substructure when the source was ‘inactive’ (ASCA observation), whereas a smooth, almost sinusoidal profile appears after the source had become very active (RXTE observation). The variable pulse profile of SGR $`1900+14`$ could be ascribed to residual heat output in the active region following the August 27 event.

The evolution of $`\dot{P}`$ is shown in Figure 3, where we plot the rate of spindown calculated between each consecutive observation as well as within each RXTE observation. Note that the spindown rate remains practically constant after June 1998.

### 2.3 Search for Orbital Period

In the August 1998 RXTE observations we found systematic departures of pulse phases from the best fit ephemeris. These departures of $`0.05`$ cycles typically persisted for a few thousand seconds. Since such signatures can potentially be due to binary orbital motion, we searched for periodic variations in the pulse phases.

We analysed 53 ks of PCA  standard1 data from August 28 to September 2. After data from bursts were eliminated, the rates were divided into 400s intervals, with a pulse profile determined for each interval. Pulse phases were then determined by correlation with the average pulse profile. A search for sinusoidal variations was conducted for orbital periods from $`10^3`$ to $`10^6`$ s, but no orbital modulation was found. For periods in the range of $`10^3`$ s $`<P_{\mathrm{orbit}}<7.5\times 10^4`$ s we can limit circular orbits to $`a_\mathrm{x}\mathrm{sin}i<0.2(P_{\mathrm{orbit}}/10^4)^{0.15}`$s (95% confidence). For $`8\times 10^3`$s$`<P_{\mathrm{orbit}}<8\times 10^5`$s, possible companion masses must be below $`0.1M_{}/\mathrm{sin}i`$, assuming a 1.4$`M_{}`$ neutron star.

It is likely the short-term departure of the pulse phases from the long-term ephemeris is due to pulse shape variations. We see minor changes in the pulse shape over the course of the August observations, while more dramatic changes are evident between the first and second RXTE observation.

### 2.4 Spectral Analysis

We have performed spectral fits using XSPEC to the persistent emission data for both RXTE observations. In both spectra we find evidence of a line at $`6.7`$ keV; the best fit was obtained for a powerlaw + gaussian model. The values for the power law (photon) index, $`N_H`$, and line centroid are, (2.1, 3.4$`\times 10^{22}`$, 6.6 keV) and (3.1, 5.5$`\times 10^{22}`$, 6.5 keV) for June 2 and August 28, 1998, respectively; the line is more significant in the first observation. The power law index and $`N_H`$ values for June 2 are consistent with the values reported from the ASCA data (Hurley et al. 1998e ); the August 28 data exhibit a higher $`N_H`$ and a softer spectrum. We cannot confidently attribute the line to SGR $`1900+14`$ as the RXTE field of view is $`10`$ times larger than that of ASCA and may include contamination from other sources, – such as XTE J$`1906+09`$ which was active at least after August 30, 1998 (Takeshima et al. (1998)) –, as well as from the diffuse galactic emission.

We have further estimated the unabsorbed persistent flux between 2-10 keV to directly compare it with the ASCA flux of $`1.28\times 10^{11}`$ ergs/cm<sup>2</sup> s reported for April 30, 1998 (Hurley et al. 1998e ). For the June 2 and August 28, 1998 observations, the fluxes are $`4.4\times 10^{11}`$ ergs/cm<sup>2</sup> s and $`9.9\times 10^{11}`$ ergs/cm<sup>2</sup> s, respectively (after taking into account the effect of the 0.441 offset of the RXTE pointing). Assuming a distance to the source of $`7`$ kpc (Hurley et al. (1994); Vasisht et al. (1994)), we find that the luminosity of SGR $`1900+14`$ varied from $`2.4\times 10^{35}`$ ergs/s to $`2.1\times 10^{36}`$ ergs/s, i.e., it was a factor of $`10`$ higher during its second active episode. Although we cannot exclude the contribution of the diffuse galactic emission and source contamination in the absolute values of these estimates, we believe that the ratio of the two values yields the true luminosity increase between the two episodes.

## 3 Discussion

We have confirmed the second case of a pulsar (Hurley et al. 1998e ) associated with the persistent emission of an SGR and have been able to measure a secular increase in its period. The first case, SGR $`180620`$, had a very similar period and period derivative of 7.47 s and 8.3$`\times 10^{11}`$ s/s, respectively (Kouveliotou et al. 1998a ). We have argued that the secular spindown of SGR $`180620`$ was due to torques from magnetic dipole radiation and a relativistic wind, and we have estimated the pulsar characteristic spindown age and (dipolar) magnetic field strength to be $`1500`$ years and $`8\times 10^{14}`$ G, respectively. Our earlier observations demonstrated the existence of ‘magnetars’ – neutron stars with superstrong magnetic fields (Duncan & Thompson (1992)) – and supported models attributing SGR bursts to crustquakes produced by magnetic stress (Thompson & Duncan (1995)).

In view of the strong similarities between SGRs, it would appear that in SGR $`1900+14`$ the spindown is also the result of a magnetized wind. The almost constant $`\dot{P}1.1\times 10^{10}`$ observed in SGR $`1900+14`$ between the May and August 1998 RXTE observations (see Figure 3) implies $`B_{}=8\times 10^{14}`$ G, if the vacuum magnetic torque were the only torque acting on the star. The age of SGR $`1900+14`$ would be $`P/2\dot{P}700`$ years, i.e., so short that one must give up any physical association between it and the nearby SNR G $`42.8+0.6`$. First, the remnant is much older and, second, a tangential velocity of $`5\times 10^4D_7`$ km s<sup>-1</sup> would be required at a distance of $`7D_7`$ kpc. The smaller $`\dot{P}=5.5\times 10^{11}`$ s/s between the ASCA and the RXTE May 1998 observations could be ascribed to a glitch of magnitude $`\mathrm{\Delta }P/P=4\times 10^5`$ during that interval. Large glitches in the range $`|\mathrm{\Delta }P/P|=10^510^4`$ are indeed implied by an extrapolation of the glitching behavior of young pulsars to the much slower spins of the SGR and the ‘anomalous X-ray pulsar’ (AXP) sources (Thompson & Duncan (1996)); but it is surpising that SGR $`1900+14`$ should not also have been observed to glitch during the great burst of activity associated with the August 27 event.

The spindown rate of a magnetar may, however, be grossly underestimated by the vacuum dipole formalism. The dipole luminosity $`L_{MDR}=1.0\times 10^{34}(B_{}/10B_{QED})^2(R_{}/10\mathrm{km})^6(P/5.16\mathrm{s})^4`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> is much smaller than the quiescent X-ray luminosity ($`L_X10^{35}10^{36}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> for both the AXP and SGR sources) as well as the time-averaged burst luminosity ($`L_X3\times 10^{35}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> during an active phase of SGR $`180620`$) (Kouveliotou et al. 1998a ). In this context, quiescent particle emission driven by internal seismic activity increases the spindown luminosity to $`I\omega \dot{\omega }=L_{MDR}\times (L_{\mathrm{particle}}/L_{MDR})^{1/2}`$ (Thompson & Blaes (1998)) and the simple estimate of the magnetic field derived above from $`P`$ and $`\dot{P}`$ is an overestimate. This effect is especially important for SGR $`180620`$, where $`L_{\mathrm{particle}}10^{37}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> is inferred from observations of the surrounding radio halo (Vasisht et al. (1995)) on both small and large angular scales (Thompson & Duncan (1996)); for that source the required value of $`B_{}`$ is reduced to $`2\times 10^{14}`$ G.

Transport of a magnetic field through the core and rigid crust of a neutron star leads to two basic modes of energy release (Thompson & Duncan (1996)): internal frictional heat which is partially conducted to the surface; and frequent low energy fractures that couple to magnetospheric Alfvén modes and thence to energetic particles. In this model, an SGR burst is triggered only if the Alfvén mode has a large enough amplitude to cascade to high wavenumber before leaking out of the magnetosphere (Thompson & Blaes (1998)).

If SGR $`1900+14`$ turns on as a quiescent particle source ($`L_{\mathrm{particle}}>L_{MDR}`$) during brief periods of burst activity, then its true age exceeds our measured value of $`P/2\dot{P}`$, and a physical association with SNR G $`42.8+0.6`$ (estimated age $`10^4`$ yr; Vasisht et al. (1995)) becomes possible. A magnetic field $`B_{}=2\times 10^{14}t_4^{1/2}`$ G is required for dipole radiation alone to spin down the star to a 5.16 s period at an age of $`t_4\times 10^4`$ yr. Given this value of $`B_{}`$, the period derivative is raised above its long term average to $`\dot{P}=1.1\times 10^{10}`$ s/s if $`L_{particle}=1.7\times 10^{36}(\dot{P}/10^{10})^2t_4`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> – well below the particle luminosity inferred for SGR $`180620`$. The total energy injected in relativistic particles between the two RXTE observations is $`2\times 10^{43}`$ erg (not including any particles injected during the August 27 event). Comparison with the energy of the 1<sup>′′</sup> synchrotron bubble around SGR $`180620`$ (Vasisht et al. (1995)) suggests that radio flux may be detectable (at the 0.1 mJy level). At this more advanced age, the tangential velocity needed to propel SGR $`1900+14`$ out of SNR G $`42.8+0.6`$ is $`3400D_7t_4^1`$ km s<sup>-1</sup> Ṡeveral mechanisms could impart unusually high velocities to magnetars at birth (Duncan & Thompson (1992)).

The time dependence of $`\dot{P}`$ and quiescent $`L_X`$ in SGR $`1900+14`$ is mirrored in the behavior of the AXP sources. As is the case for SGR $`180620`$, the value of $`P/\dot{P}`$ for SGR $`1900+14`$ is smaller than any of the (five) values measured so far<sup>3</sup><sup>3</sup>3The spindown behavior of 1E $`2259+586`$, the best-studied AXP, is discussed most recently in Baykal et al. (1998). for ‘anomalous X-ray Pulsars’ (AXPs), which have also been suggested to be magnetars (Duncan & Thompson (1995); Thompson & Duncan (1996)). This supports the suggestion (Kouveliotou et al. 1998a ) that AXPs are a later, less active, phase in the evolution of SGRs.

We acknowledge support from the following grants: NASA grants NAG5-2755, NAG5-3674 and NAG5-4878 (J.v.P.); NASA grants NAG5-32490 and NAG5-4799 (C.K.); NASA grant NAG5-3100 (C.T.); Texas Advanced Research Project grant ARP-028 (R.D.); NASA grant NAG5-4238 (M.H.F.); NASA grant NAG5-4882 (K.H.)      

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