Extragalactic Magnetar Giant Flares: Population Implications, Rates, and Prospects for Gamma-Rays, Gravitational Waves, and Neutrinos

Abstract

Magnetar giant flares (MGFs) are the most energetic non-catastrophic transients known to originate from stellar objects. The first discovered events were nearby. In recent years, several extragalactic events have been identified, implying an extremely high volumetric rate. We show that future instruments with a sensitivity ≲5 × 10⁻⁹ erg cm⁻² at ∼1 MeV will be dominated by extragalactic MGFs over short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs). Clear discrimination of MGFs requires intrinsic GRB localization capability to identify host galaxies. As MGFs involve a release of a sizable fraction of the neutron star's magnetic free energy reservoir in a single event, they provide us with invaluable tools for better understanding magnetar birth properties and the evolution of their magnetic fields. A major obstacle is to identify a (currently) small subpopulation of MGFs in a larger sample of more energetic and distant sGRBs. We develop the tools to analyze the properties of detected events and their occurrence rate relative to sGRBs. Even with the current (limited) number of events, we can constrain the initial internal magnetic field of a typical magnetar at formation to be B₀ ≈ 4 × 10¹⁴–2 × 10¹⁵ G. Larger samples will constrain the distribution of birth fields. We also estimate the contribution of MGFs to the gravitational-wave (GW) stochastic background. Depending on the acceleration time of baryon-loaded ejecta involved in MGFs, their GW emission may reach beyond 10 kHz and, if so, will likely dominate over other conventional astrophysical sources in that frequency range.