X-ray Data Analysis to Search for Magnetar Candidates in the Galactic Plane

Abstract

We report on our Galactic plane searches for magnetars in the archival Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) data. We summarize the properties of known magnetars and use them to establish a procedure for magnetar searches. The procedure includes four steps: source finding, spectral characterization, optical counterpart checks, and period searches. We searched 1,282 archival CXO observations, found 32,838 X-ray sources, and selected 25 intriguing candidates using the developed procedure. Although we do not firmly identify a magnetar among them, we significantly reduced the number of targets in future magnetar searches to be done with better X-ray telescopes.

Keywords

• magnetar
• Chandra