Broad-band study with Suzaku of the magnetar class

Abstract

Broad-band (0.8-70 keV) spectra of the persistent X-ray emission from 9 magnetars were obtained with Suzaku, including 3 objects in apparent outburst. The soft X-ray component was detected from all of them, with a typical blackbody temperature of kT ~ 0.5 keV, while the hard-tail component, dominating above ~10 keV, was detected at ~1 mCrab intensity from 7 of them. Therefore, the spectrum composed of a soft emission and a hard-tail component may be considered to be a common property of magnetars, both in their active and quiescent states. Wide-band spectral analyses revealed that the hard-tail component has a 1-60 keV flux, Fh, comparable to or even higher than that carried by the 1-60 keV soft component, Fs. The hardness ratio of these objects, defined as xi=Fh/Fs, was found to be tightly anti-correlated with their characteristic age tau as xi=(3.3+/-0.3)x(tau/1 kyr)^(-0.67+/-0.04) with a correlation coefficient of -0.989, over the range from xi~10 to xi~0.1. Magnetars in outburst states were found to lie on the same correlation as relatively quiescent ones. This hardness ratio is also positively correlated with their surface magnetic fields with a correlation coefficient of 0.873. In addition, the hard-tail component becomes harder towards sources with older characteristic ages, with the photon index changing from ~1.7 to ~0.4.

8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters

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