Detecting Magnetar Giant Flares with MoonBEAM

TL;DR

This paper discusses the detection and analysis of Magnetar Giant Flares (MGFs), proposing the MoonBEAM instrument to improve detection sensitivity and differentiate MGFs from short Gamma-ray Bursts, enhancing understanding of these energetic events.

Contribution

It introduces the MoonBEAM instrument designed to detect MGFs more effectively and analyzes recent observations to distinguish MGFs from other gamma-ray sources.

Findings

Spectral and temporal analysis of recent MGFs

MoonBEAM's potential to detect more MGFs

Improved differentiation between MGFs and short GRBs

Abstract

Magnetars are slowly-rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields that rarely produce extremely bright, energetic giant flares. Magnetar Giant Flares (MGFs) begin with a short (200 ms) intense flash, followed by fainter emission lasting several minutes that is modulated by the magnetar spin period (typically 2-12 s). Over the last 40 years, only three MGFs have been observed within our Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds, which all suffered from instrumental saturation due to their extreme intensity. It has been proposed, that extragalactic MGFs masquerade as a small subset of short Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs), noting that the sensitivity of current instrumentation prevents us from detecting the pulsating tail to distances slightly beyond the Magellanic Clouds. However, their initial bright flash is readily observable out to distances of < 25 Mpc. In this presentation, we will evaluate the spectral and temporal behaviors of MGFs using recent observations from events such as GRB200415A, to differentiate them from other progenitors, such as short GRBs. We then present an overview of the Moon Burst Energetics All-sky Monitor (MoonBEAM), which will attempt to discover more of these events, providing highly sensitive data that will help unravel the nature of these phenomena further in an attempt to better understand their emission mechanisms comparatively with GRBs. In doing so, MoonBEAM will help provide a comprehensive picture of energetic astrophysical phenomena, a key goal of the Astro2020 decadal survey.