Energy Dependent Intensity Variation of the Persistent X-ray Emission of Magnetars Observed with Suzaku

Abstract

Emission mechanism of the magnetars is still controversial while various observational and theoretical studies have been made. In order to investigate mechanisms of both the persistent X-ray emission and the burst emission of the magnetars, we have proposed a model that the persistent X-ray emission consists of numerous micro-bursts of various sizes. If this model is correct, intensity Root Mean Square (RMS) variations of the persistent emission exceed the values expected from the Poisson distribution. Using $Suzaku$ archive data of 11 magnetars (22 observations), the RMS intensity variations were calculated from 0.2 keV to 70 keV. As a result, we found significant excess RMS intensity variations from all the 11 magnetars. We suppose that numerous mircro-bursts constituting the persistent X-ray emission cause the observed variations, suggesting that the persistent X-ray emission and the burst emission have identical emission mechanisms. In addition, we found that the RMS intensity variations clearly increase toward higher energy bands for 4 magnetars (6 observations). The energy dependent RMS intensity variations imply that the soft thermal component and the hard X-ray component are emitted from different regions far apart from each other.