Abstract
The X-ray spectra of the magnetar candidates are customarily fitted with an empirical, two component model: an absorbed blackbody and a power-law. However, the physical interpretation of these two spectral components is rarely discussed. It has been recently proposed that the presence of a hot plasma in the magnetosphere of highly magnetized neutron stars might distort, through efficient resonant cyclotron scattering, the thermal emission from the neutron star surface, resulting in production of non-thermal spectra. Here we discuss the Resonant Cyclotron Scattering (RCS) model, and present its XSPEC implementation, as well as preliminary results of its application to Anomalous X-ray Pulsars and Soft Gamma-ray Repeaters.
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N.R. is supported by an NWO Post-Doctoral Fellowship. S.Z. thanks the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, PPARC, for support through an Advanced Fellowship.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0 ), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Rea, N., Zane, S., Lyutikov, M. et al. Our distorted view of magnetars: application of the resonant cyclotron scattering model. Astrophys Space Sci 308, 61–65 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-007-9306-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-007-9306-1