Physical Society Colloquium

Diversity in Young Neutron Stars:
The High-Magnetic-Field Puzzle

Victoria Kaspi

Department of Physics
McGill University

Recently strong evidence has been found in favour of the existence of “magnetars”, isolated, ultra-highly magnetized young neutron stars. These objects contradict the standard picture of all young neutron stars being like the famous Crab pulsar, i.e., powered by rotation. One remaining major mystery however has been whether there are transition objects between the rotation-powered neutron star and magnetar populations, as might reasonably be expected. In this talk, I will review the observational evidence for magnetars, and describe very recent discoveries that have revealed evidence for the long-sought “missing links” between the two neutron star populations.