Are radio pulsars the progenitors of anomalous X-ray pulsars and soft gamma repeaters?

Constraining the Proper Motions of Two Magnetars

“…The proposed explanations run the gamut from evolutionary sequences (e.g., Lin & Zhang 2004;Kasumov et al 2006) and quiescent states (e.g., Woods & Thompson 2006;Gotthelf et al 2004) to differences in progenitor mass (Gaensler et al 2005) or magnetic field orientation and geometry (Zhang & Harding 2000;Kulkarni et al 2003). Duncan & Thompson (1992) have proposed that an initial short birth period is responsible for the generation of the high magnetar fields through an efficient large scale dynamo, and have also pointed out that high magnetic fields can produce asymmetric neutrino emission at birth, resulting in extreme space velocities (> 10 3 km s −1 ; also see Thompson & Duncan 1993, 1995Lai 2001).…”

Magnetars and fossil-field model of origin of magnetic field

“…If the time of losses, or correspondingly the growth of the period of a pulsar stretches for a longer period of time, for example, due to process of permanently acting glitches, as it was offered by Lin & Zhang (2004), such tendency could not be observed. However, as it has been shown by us earlier (Kasumov et al, 2006), this mechanism of formation of magnetars from the radio pulsars with high magnetic fields and initially small periods of rotation, also appeared inefficient. But all this certainly does not exclude an opportunity of creating other mechanisms of the long process of the period growth (but not more than 10 4 − 10 5 years, i.e.…”

“…One of such mechanisms could be that proposed in (Lin & Zhang, 2004) for newly born young pulsars with the periods ∼ msec, namely the mechanism of prolonged and repeating glitches with relatively high values. But as it was already stated above, the action of this mechanism was not confirmed by the observational distribution and evolution of such pulsars in the P − Ṗ diagram (Kasumov et al, 2006).…”