Waiting for the Big One: A New Class of SGR Outbursts?

Abstract

It is suggested that magnetars eventually become unstable to a dynamic overturning instability that destroys most of their dipole moment in a single event. It is further suggested that such an instability would produce a supergiant version of the largest soft gamma ray bursts that have thus far been observed, and that they could be observed out to tens or even $10^2$ Mpc. Persistent emission and afterglows from the fireball might confirm positive identification with nearby galaxies and perhaps provide other distinguishing features as well.

to appear in M.N.R.A.S

References in corpus (1)

• Evidence for a Sudden Magnetic Field Reconfiguration in SGR 1900+14

Cited by in corpus (26)

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• Multimessenger astronomy with gravitational waves and high-energy neutrinos
• The distances of short-hard GRBs and the SGR connection
• Pure and loaded fireballs in SGR giant flares
• SGR giant flares in the BATSE short GRB catalogue: constraints from spectroscopy
• A new analysis of the short-duration, hard-spectrum GRB 051103, a possible extragalactic SGR giant flare
• Baryon Loading of Gamma Ray Bursts by Pick-up Neutrons
• GRB 070201: A possible Soft Gamma Ray Repeater in M31
• The Growth, Polarization, and Motion of the Radio Afterglow from the Giant Flare from SGR 1806-20
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• Short gamma-ray bursts from SGR giant flares and neutron star mergers: two populations are better than one
• Structure, Deformations and Gravitational Wave Emission of Magnetars
• A study of the Galactic star forming region IRAS 02593+6016 / S 201 in infrared and radio wavelengths
• The radio afterglow from the giant flare of SGR 1900+14: the same mechanism as afterglows from classic gamma-ray bursts?
• Superflares from magnetars revealing the GRB central engine
• Gamma-ray bursts and other sources of giant lightning discharges in protoplanetary systems
• Phase Drifts of Sub-pulses during the 2004 Giant Flare of SGR 1806-20 and Settling of the Magnetic Fields
• What Magnetar Seismology can Teach us about the Magnetic Fields
• Very high frequency gravitational waves from magnetars and gamma-ray burst
• The Giant Flare from SGR 1806-20 and its Radio Afterglow
• Emission Mechanisms of Fast Radio Bursts
• There and back again: Mysterious optical pulse profile behavior of the transitional millisecond pulsar PSR J1023+0038