Intermittency and Lifetime of the 625 Hz QPO in the 2004 Hyperflare from the Magnetar SGR 1806-20 as evidence for magnetic coupling between the crust and the core

TL;DR

This study investigates the intermittency and lifetime of the 625 Hz QPO in the 2004 magnetar flare, providing evidence for magnetic coupling between the crust and core, challenging previous models of persistent high-frequency oscillations.

Contribution

It systematically analyzes short data segments to show the transient nature of the 625 Hz QPO, supporting magnetic crust-core interaction theories.

Findings

QPO detected only in short (~0.5s) segments

QPO appears intermittently, not persistently

Supports magnetic coupling between crust and core

Abstract

Quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) detected in the 2004 giant flare from SGR 1806-20 are often interpreted as global magneto-elastic oscillations of the neutron star. There is, however, a large discrepancy between theoretical models, which predict that the highest frequency oscillations should die out rapidly, and the observations, which suggested that the highest-frequency signals persisted for ~100s in X-ray data from two different spacecraft. This discrepancy is particularly important for the high-frequency QPO at ~625 Hz. However, previous analyses did not systematically test whether the signal could also be there in much shorter data segments, more consistent with the theoretical predictions. Here, we test for the presence of the high-frequency QPO at 625 Hz in data from both the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) and the Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) systematically both in individual rotational cycles of the neutron star, as well as averaged over multiple successive rotational cycles at the same phase. We find that the QPO in the RXTE data is consistent with being only present in a single cycle, for a short duration of ~0.5s, whereas the RHESSI data are as consistent with a short-lived signal that appears and disappears as with a long-lived QPO. Taken together, this data provides evidence for strong magnetic interaction between the crust and the core.