Pulsar Glitch Behaviour and AXPs, SGRs and DTNs

Abstract

Large pulsar glitches seem to be common to all radio pulsars and to exhibit a universal behaviour connecting the rate of occurrence, event size and interglitch relaxation that can be explained if the glitches are due to angular momentum exchange in the neutron star. This has implications for the energy dissipation rate. The large timing excursions observed in SGRs are not similar to the pulsar glitches. The one glitch observed in an AXP is very similar to pulsar glitches and demonstrates that typical neutron star glitch response occurs when the external torque is constant for an extended period of time. In the long run the timing variations of both the AXPs and the SGRs are much stronger than the timing noise of radio pulsars but comparable with the behaviour of accreting sources. For the DTNs, the thermal luminosities do not seem compatible with cooling ages and statistics if these sources are magnetars. The energy dissipation rates implied by the dynamical behaviour of glitching pulsars will provide the luminosities of the DTNs under propeller spindown torques supplied by fossil disks on neutron stars with conventional 10$^{12}$ G dipole magnetic fields.