Interpreting the X-ray afterglows of gamma-ray bursts with radiative losses and millisecond magnetars

Understand

The spin-down energy of millisecond magnetars has been invoked to explain X-ray afterglow observations of a significant fraction of short and long gamma-ray bursts.

• Here, we extend models previously introduced in the literature, incorporating radiative losses with the spin down of a magnetar central engine through an arbitrary braking index.
• Combining this with a model for the tail of the prompt emission, we show that our model can better explain the data than millisecond-magnetar models without radiative losses or those that invoke spin down solely through vacuum dipole radiation.
• We find that our model predicts a subset of X-ray flares seen in some gamma-ray bursts.