Discovery of a new Soft Gamma Repeater, SGR J1833-0832

Understand

On 2010 March 19, the Swift/Burst Alert Telescope triggered on a short burst with temporal and spectral characteristics similar to those of Soft Gamma Repeater (SGR) bursts.

• The source location, however, did not coincide with any known SGR.
• Subsequent observations of the source error box with the Swift/X-ray Telescope and the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) led to the discovery of a new X-ray source, with a spin period of 7.56 s, confirming SGR J1833-0832 as a new magnetar.
• Based on our detailed temporal and spectral analyses, we show that the new SGR is rapidly spinning down (4 x 10^{-12} s/s) and find an inferred dipole magnetic field of 1.8 x 10^{14} G.