A Criterion for Magnetars Producing Giant Flares

TL;DR

This paper develops a new criterion based on magnetic and gravitational forces to identify magnetars capable of producing giant flares, by analyzing the equilibrium and stability of a curved flux rope model.

Contribution

It introduces a modified flux rope model with a curved configuration and derives a quantitative criterion involving magnetic field strength and mass parameters for giant flare production.

Findings

Critical value of η for giant flare occurrence is 0.48.

Curvature force and magnetic pressure can overcome gravity when η is small.

The criterion links magnetic field strength and mass to flare potential.

Abstract

In this work, the straight flux rope in the model of giant flares on magnetars (Meng et al. 2014) was replaced with a curved one and the equilibrium behavior of the flux rope was investigated. Two footpoints of the flux rope are anchored to the spherical surface of magnetar. The forces acting on the flux rope include magnetic tension, magnetic pressure, curvature force, gravity. The equilibrium in the flux rope, so as in the global configuration, is achieved as these forces offset each other. Changes in the background environment drive the configuration to evolve through a set of equilibria in a quasi-static fashion until the critical point is reached and the loss of equilibrium in the configuration occurs, invoking a giant flare. We establish a criterion to identify magnetars capable of producing giant flares. Among the four forces, the curvature force as well as the magnetic compression tend to expel the flue rope outward. In a given magnetic configuration, the curvature force and magnetic compression are proportional to the square of the current intensity of the flux rope, which is determined by the frozen-flux condition and background magnetic field strength. We find that only when $\eta = G M m / ({{{R^4}{B_0}^2}})< 0.48 $ is satisfied, the system reaches a critical point and potentially undergoes catastrophe. Here, $G, M, m, R$, and $B_{0}$ are the gravitational constant, the mass of neutron star, the mass of flux rope, the radius of neutron star, and the surface magnetic field strength of neutron star, respectively. The physical meaning of this criterion is that when $\eta \propto m / B_{0}^{2}$ is small enough, the curvature force and magnetic pressure can be sufficiently large to overcome gravitational confinement. This criterion establishes a basis for identifying magnetars capable of producing giant flares.