An international research team led by Gregory Desvignes from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn/DE has used the Effelsberg and Jodrell Bank radio telescopes to observe the precessing magnetar XTE J1810-197 — a highly magnetised and ultra-dense neutron star — shortly after its X-ray enhanced activity and radio reactivation. This precession damped on a timescale of a few months challenging some models used to explain the origin of the mysterious repeating fast radio bursts.
The rapid decay of a magnetar’s precession after an X-ray outburst likely rules out free precession as their origin.
The paper is published in Nature Astronomy (Desvignes, G., Weltevrede, P., Gao, Y. et al. A freely precessing magnetar following an X-ray outburst. Nat Astron (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02226-7).
Image: © Gregory Desvignes / MPIfR; Artistic rendering of a precessing magnetar with a twisted magnetic field and its radio beam pointing towards Earth.