Magnetar-like X-ray bursts suppress pulsar radio emission [HEAP]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1710.03718


Rotation-powered pulsars and magnetars are two different observational manifestations of neutron stars: rotation powered pulsars are rapidly spinning objects that are mostly observed as pulsating radio sources, while magnetars, neutron stars with the highest known magnetic fields, often emit short-duration X-ray bursts. Here we report simultaneous observations of the high-magnetic-field radio pulsar PSR J1119-6127 at X-ray, with XMM-Newton & NuSTAR, and at radio energies with Parkes radio telescope, during a period of magnetar-like bursts. The rotationally powered radio emission shuts off coincident with the occurrence of multiple X-ray bursts, and recovers on a time scale of ~70 seconds. These observations of related radio and X-ray phenomena further solidify the connection between radio pulsars and magnetars, and suggest that the pair plasma produced in bursts can disrupt the acceleration mechanism of radio emitting particles.

Read this paper on arXiv…

R. Archibald, M. Burgay, M. Lyutikov, et. al.
Wed, 11 Oct 17
38/65

Comments: 8 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to ApJL