Parkes observations for project P626 semester 2015OCTS

Full description

We plan to search for pulsed radio-emission in transient "magnetar" sources (already known or yet to be discovered at the time of submission of this proposal), during the phase following an X-ray outburst, i.e. after an increasing of the X-ray flux of the magnetar of a factor at least 10 with respect to the normal emission. Observations of past years showed that radio-emission has been triggered in transient magnetars in at least 4 cases over 11 after this kind of outburst. However, in several cases, no prompt radio observation had been planned, preventing to investigate the phase of onset of the radio emission. A more precise understanding of this phase may greatly contribute to clarify the nature of the radio-emission mechanism in magnetars and the relation between them and the canonical radio pulsars. A similar program of NAPA observations has been planned by our group at various X-ray satellites and ground-based infrared and optical telescopes, thus allowing a multi-wavelenght investigation of the sources. To fully exploit our multi-wavelength data sets, we also intend to perform simultaneous X-ray and radio follow-ups of magnetars for which a trigger of this programme was obtained during current or previous semester.