A Magnetic Flux Tube Oscillation Model for QPOs in SGR Giant Flares.pdf

a r X i v : 0 8 0 7 .0 6 8 3 v 1 [ a s t r o - p h ] 4 J u l 2 0 0 8 A Magnetic Flux Tube Oscillation Model for QPOs in SGR Giant Flares Bo Ma, Xiang-Dong Li, and P. F. Chen Department of Astronomy, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China; xiaomabo@, lixd@, chenpf@ ABSTRACT Giant flares from soft gamma-ray repeaters (SGRs) are one of the most violent phenomena in neutron stars. Quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) with frequencies ranging from 18 to 1840 Hz have been discovered in the tails of giant flares from two SGRs, and were ascribed to be seismic vibrations or torsional oscillations of magnetars. Here we propose an alternative explanation for the QPOs in terms of standing sausage mode oscillations of flux tubes in the magnetar coronae. We show that most of the QPOs observed in SGR giant flares could be well accounted for except for those with very high frequencies (625 and 1840 Hz). 1. Introduction Soft gamma-ray repeaters (SGRs) are neutron stars that exhibit sporadic burst activities most prominently in soft gamma-rays (Norris et al. 1991). Besides normal bursts with energy E ～ 1041 ergs, enormously energetic giant flares (with E ～ 1044 ? 1046 ergs) have also been observed, for example, from SGR 0526?66 in 1979 (Mazets et al. 1979), from SGR 1900+14 in 1998 (Hurley et al. 1999; Feroci et al. 1999) and from SGR 1806?20 in 2004 (Hurley et al. 2005; Terasawa et al. 2005; Palmer et al. 2005). The giant flares generally start with an initially rising spike lasting ～ 1 s and then evolve into a decaying phase which lasts hundreds of seconds. Theoretically, SGRs are thought to be magnetars, neutron stars with surface magnetic fields strengths of ～ 1014?1015 G (Thompson Duncan, 1993; Duncan Thompson, 1994; Thompson Duncan, 1996, 2001), or neutron stars with normal magnetic fields accreting from a disk formed from the fallback in supernova explosions (e.g., Alpar 2001). During the three SGR giant flares mentioned above, quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) we