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A unified picture of Galactic and cosmological fast radio bursts

Lu, Wenbin and Kumar, Pawan and Zhang, Bing (2020) A unified picture of Galactic and cosmological fast radio bursts. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 498 (1). pp. 1397-1405. ISSN 0035-8711. doi:10.1093/mnras/staa2450. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20201214-085002792

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Abstract

The discovery of a fast radio burst (FRB) in our Galaxy associated with a magnetar (neutron star with strong magnetic field) has provided a critical piece of information to help us finally understand these enigmatic transients. We show that the volumetric rate of Galactic-FRB like events is consistent with the faint end of the cosmological FRB rate, and hence they most likely belong to the same class of transients. The Galactic FRB had an accompanying X-ray burst, but many X-ray bursts from the same object had no radio counterpart. Their relative rates suggest that for every FRB there are roughly 10²–10³ X-ray bursts. The radio light curve of the Galactic FRB had two spikes, separated by 30 ms in the 400–800 MHz frequency band. This is an important clue and highly constraining of the class of models where the radio emission is produced outside the light cylinder of the magnetar. We suggest that magnetic disturbances close to the magnetar surface propagate to a distance of a few tens of neutron star radii where they damp and produce radio emission. The coincident hard X-ray spikes associated with the two FRB pulses seen in this burst and the flux ratio between the two frequency bands can be understood in this scenario. This model provides a unified picture for faint bursts like the Galactic FRB as well as the bright events seen at cosmological distances.


Item Type:Article
Related URLs:
URLURL TypeDescription
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa2450DOIArticle
https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.06736arXivDiscussion Paper
ORCID:
AuthorORCID
Lu, Wenbin0000-0002-1568-7461
Additional Information:© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model). Accepted 2020 August 10. Received 2020 August 7; in original form 2020 July 27. Published: 17 August 2020. WL thank Shri Kulkarni for his encouragement throughout this project. This work has been funded in part by an NSF grant AST-2009619. WL was supported by the David and Ellen Lee Fellowship at Caltech. Data Availability: The data underlying this article will be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author.
Group:TAPIR, Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics
Funders:
Funding AgencyGrant Number
NSFAST-2009619
David and Ellen Lee Postdoctoral ScholarshipUNSPECIFIED
Subject Keywords:plasmas – waves – stars: magnetars – radio continuum: transients – fast radio bursts
Issue or Number:1
DOI:10.1093/mnras/staa2450
Record Number:CaltechAUTHORS:20201214-085002792
Persistent URL:https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20201214-085002792
Official Citation:Wenbin Lu, Pawan Kumar, Bing Zhang, A unified picture of Galactic and cosmological fast radio bursts, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 498, Issue 1, October 2020, Pages 1397–1405, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa2450
Usage Policy:No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided.
ID Code:107056
Collection:CaltechAUTHORS
Deposited By: Tony Diaz
Deposited On:14 Dec 2020 20:57
Last Modified:16 Nov 2021 18:59

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