Search

The formation of neutron stars (NSs), both from collapses of massive stars and mergers of compact objects, can be usually indicated by bright transients emitted from explosively-ejected material. In particular, if the newborn NSs can rotate at a millisecond period and have a sufficiently high magnetic field, then the spin-down of the NSs would provide a remarkable amount of energy to the emitting material. As a result, super-luminous supernovae could be produced in the massive stellar collapse cases, while some unusual fast evolving and luminous optical transients could arise from the cases of NS mergers and accretion-induced collapses of white dwarfs. In all cases, if the dipolar magnetic fields of the newborn NSs can be amplified to be as high as 1015 G, a relativistic jet could be launched and then a gamma-ray burst can be produced as the jet successfully breaks out from the surrounding nearly-isotropic ejected material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]