Exploring a search for long-duration transient gravitational waves associated with magnetar bursts

Understand

Soft gamma repeaters and anomalous X-ray pulsars are thought to be magnetars, neutron stars with strong magnetic fields of order $\mathord{\sim} 10^{13}$--$10^{15} \, \mathrm{gauss}$.

• These objects emit intermittent bursts of hard X-rays and soft gamma rays.
• Quasiperiodic oscillations in the X-ray tails of giant flares imply the existence of neutron star oscillation modes which could emit gravitational waves powered by the magnetar's magnetic energy reservoir.
• We describe a method to search for transient gravitational-wave signals associated with magnetar bursts with durations of 10s to 1000s of seconds.