Nature versus Nurture: The Origin of Soft Gamma‐Ray Repeaters and Anomalous X‐Ray Pulsars

Abstract

Soft gamma-ray repeaters (SGRs) and anomalous x-ray pulsars (AXPs) are young and radio-quiet x-ray pulsars which have been rapidly spun-down to slow spin periods clustered in the range 5-12 s. If the unusual properties of SGRs and AXPs were due to an innate feature, such as a superstrong magnetic field, then the pre-supernova environments of SGRs and AXPs should be typical of neutron star progenitors. This is not the case, however, as we demonstrate that the interstellar media which surrounded the SGR and AXP progenitors and their SNRs were unusually dense compared to the environments around most young radio pulsars and SNRs. Thus, if these SNR associations are real the SGRs and AXPs can not be the result of a purely innate property. We suggest instead that the environments surrounding SGRs and AXPs play a key role in their development, and we explore a scenario in which the SGRs and AXPs are high velocity neutron stars spun-down by propeller effect winds driven by their interactions with co-moving ejecta from their supernova explosions. We show that such an origin can directly account for the observed properties of the SGRs and AXPs, including the clustering of their periods and their observed number in our Galaxy.