The Second Plateau in X-Ray Afterglow Providing Additional Evidence for Rapidly Spinning Magnetars as the GRB Central Engine

Evidence for the central engine of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) has been collected in the Neil Gehrels Swift data. For instance, some GRBs show an internal X-ray plateau followed by very steep decay, which is difficult interpret within the framework of a black hole (BH) central engine, but is consistent within a rapidly spinning magnetar engine picture. The very steep decay at the end of the plateau suggests a sudden cessation of the central engine, which is explained as the collapse of a supramassive magnetar into a BH when it spins down. Here we propose that some additional evidence, such as a second X-ray plateau feature, would show up if the fallback accretion could activate the newborn BH and sufficient energy could be transferred from the newborn BH to the GRB blast wave. With a systematic data analysis for all long GRBs, we find three candidates in the Swift sample, i.e., GRBs 070802, 090111, and 120213A, whose X-ray afterglow lightcurves contain two plateaus, with the first one being an internal plateau. We find that in a fairly loose and reasonable parameter space, the second X-ray plateau data for all 3 GRBs could be interpreted with our proposed model. Future observations are likely to discover similar events, which could offer more information on the properties of the magnetar, as well as the newborn BH.