SGR 1627-41: a transient Soft Gamma-ray Repeater

Soft Gammaray Repeaters were the first class of Xray sources believed to hostmagnetars, i.e. isolated neutron stars with surface magnetic fields of10^1410^15 G. SGR 162741 is the only known SGR with a transient Xraycounterpart. After a single bursting episode, its persistent Xray luminositymonotonically decreased from 1998 to 2004 with an overall variation of a factorgreater than 20, the largest ever observed in a SGR. We propose to observe againSGR 162741 with XMMNewton EPIC to establish whether the flux has reached astable level and to obtain the best quality spectrum for a SGR in an unique lowluminosity state. truncated!, Please see actual data for full text [truncated!, Please see actual data for full text]