Revisit the periodicity of SGR J1935+2154 bursts with updated sample

Since FRB 200428 has been found to be associated with an X-ray burst from the Galactic magnetar SGR J1935+2154, it is interesting to explore whether the magnetar bursts also follow the similar active periodic behaviour as some repeating FRBs. Previous studies show that there is possible period of about 230 days in SGR J1935+2154 bursts. Here, we collected an updated burst sample from SGR J1935+2154, including all bursts reported by Fermi/GBM and GECAM till 2022 January. We also developed a targeted search pipeline to reveal more bursts from SGR J1935+2154 in the Fermi/GBM data from 2008 August to 2014 December (i.e. before the first burst detected by Swift/BAT). With this burst sample, we re-analysed the possible periodicity of SGR J1935+2154 bursts using the Period Folding and Lomb-Scargle Periodogram methods. Our results show that the periodicity similar to 238 days reported in literature is probably fake and the observation effects may introduce false periods (i.e. 55 days) according to simulation tests. We find that, for the current burst sample, the most probable period is 126.88 +/- 2.05 days, which could be interpreted as the precession of the magnetar. However, we note that the whole burst history is very complicated and difficult to be perfectly accommodated with any period reported thus far, therefore more monitoring observations of SGR J1935+2154 are required to test any periodicity hypothesis.

Automated summary

This article explores the periodic behavior of bursts from the Galactic magnetar SGR J1935+2154. By analyzing an updated burst sample, the researchers found a possible period of 126.88 +/- 2.05 days, which could be interpreted as the precession of the magnetar. However, the entire burst history is complex and requires more monitoring observations to test the periodicity hypothesis.