(2011) Soft and hard X-ray emissions from the anomalous X-ray pulsar 4U 0142+61 observed with Suzaku.
(2008) The strongest cosmic magnets: soft gamma-ray repeaters and anomalous X-ray pulsars. Astr.
This is the story of these puzzling objects, the anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs), and their linkage to magnetars, neutron stars with stupendously powerful magnetic fields.
Right before my talk, I wrote the words "Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXPs)" across the top of a transparency that listed the candidate stars and their properties.
In visible light, anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs) and other magnetar candidates are so faint that only the world's largest telescopes have any chance to detect them.
Another group of neutron stars, called anomalous X-ray pulsars, has also been considered possible magnetars.
"This discovery at last establishes a strong link between anomalous X-ray pulsars and soft-gamma-ray repeaters," with both being magnetars, comments Shri Kulkarni of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.--R.C.
For all these reasons they are called "
anomalous X-ray pulsars," or AXPs.