Is magnetar a fact or fiction to us?

TL;DR

This paper examines whether magnetars are a real astrophysical phenomenon or a theoretical construct, analyzing their energy sources and observational evidence to determine their true nature.

Contribution

It critically evaluates the magnetar hypothesis against alternative models like quark stars and fallback disks, highlighting the need for further observational tests.

Findings

Magnetar energy models are challenged by alternative explanations.

Observational evidence is inconclusive in definitively confirming magnetars.

Further data is required to distinguish between magnetar and alternative models.

Abstract

The key point of studying AXPs/SGRs (anomalous X-ray pulsars/soft gamma-ray repeaters) is relevant to the energy budget. Historically, rotation was thought to be the only free energy of pulsar until the discovery of accretion power in X-ray binaries. AXPs/SGRs could be magnetars if they are magnetism-powered, but would alternatively be quark-star/fallback-disk systems if more and more observations would hardly be understood in the magnetar scenario.