A strongly magnetized pulsar within grasp of the Milky Way's
  supermassive black hole
  The center of our Galaxy hosts a supermassive black hole, Sagittarius (Sgr)
A*. Young, massive stars within 0.5 pc of SgrA* are evidence of an episode of
intense star formation near the black hole a few Myr ago, which might have left
behind a young neutron star traveling deep into SgrA*'s gravitational
potential. On 2013 April 25, a short X-ray burst was observed from the
direction of the Galactic center. Thanks to a series of observations with the
Chandra and the Swift satellites, we pinpoint the associated magnetar at an
angular distance of 2.4+/-0.3 arcsec from SgrA*, and refine the source spin
period and its derivative (P=3.7635537(2) s and \dot{P} = 6.61(4)x10^{-12}
s/s), confirmed by quasi simultaneous radio observations performed with the
Green Bank (GBT) and Parkes antennas, which also constrain a Dispersion Measure
of DM=1750+/-50 pc cm^{-3}, the highest ever observed for a radio pulsar. We
have found that this X-ray source is a young magnetar at ~0.07-2 pc from SgrA*.
Simulations of its possible motion around SgrA* show that it is likely (~90%
probability) in a bound orbit around the black hole. The radiation front
produced by the past activity from the magnetar passing through the molecular
clouds surrounding the Galactic center region, might be responsible for a large
fraction of the light echoes observed in the Fe fluorescence features.
