Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userFast radio bursts: the last sign of supramassive neutron stars
84
0
0.0
(
0
)
Authors
Heino Falcke
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
Several fast radio bursts have been discovered recently, showing a bright, highly dispersed millisecond radio pulse. The pulses do not repeat and are not associated with a known pulsar or gamma-ray burst. The high dispersion suggests sources at cosmological distances, hence implying an extremely high radio luminosity, far larger than the power of single pulses from a pulsar. We suggest that a fast radio burst represents the final signal of a supramassive rotating neutron star that collapses to a black hole due to magnetic braking. The neutron star is initially above the critical mass for non-rotating models and is supported by rapid rotation. As magnetic braking constantly reduces the spin, the neutron star will suddenly collapse to a black hole several thousand to million years after its birth. We discuss several formation scenarios for supramassive neutron stars and estimate the possible observational signatures {making use of the results of recent numerical general-relativistic calculations. While the collapse will hide the stellar surface behind an event horizon, the magnetic-field lines will snap violently. This can turn an almost ordinary pulsar into a bright radio blitzar: Accelerated electrons from the travelling magnetic shock dissipate a significant fraction of the magnetosphere and produce a massive radio burst that is observable out to z>0.7. Only a few percent of the neutron stars needs to be supramassive in order to explain the observed rate. We suggest that fast radio bursts might trace the solitary formation of stellar mass black holes at high redshifts. These bursts could be an electromagnetic complement to gravitational-wave emission and reveal a new formation and evolutionary channel for black holes that are not seen as gamma-ray bursts. Radio observations of these bursts could trace the core-collapse supernova rate throughout the universe.
rate research
Read More
In this paper we propose the model that the coalescence of primordial black holes (PBHs) binaries with equal mass $M sim 10^{28}$g can emit luminous gigahertz (GHz) radio transient, which may be candidate sources for the observed fast radio bursts (FRBs), if at least one black hole holds appropriate amount of net electric charge $Q$. Using a dimensionless quantity for the charge $q = Q/sqrt{G}M$, our analyses infer that $qsim O(10^{-4.5})$ can explain the FRBs with released energy of order $O(10^{40}) {rm ergs}$. With the current sample of FRBs and assuming a distribution of charge $phi(q)$ for all PBHs, we can deduce that its form is proportional to $q^{-3.0pm0.1}$ for $qgeq 7.2times10^{-5}$ if PBHs are sources of the observed FRBs. Furthermore, with the proposed hypothetical scenario and by estimating the local event rate of FRBs $sim 2.6 times 10^3 {rm Gpc}^{-3} {rm yr}^{-1}$, one derives a lower bound for the fraction of PBHs (at the mass of $10^{28}$g) against that of matter $f_{rm PBH}(10^{28}{rm g})$ $gtrsim 10^{-5}$ needed to explain the rate. With this inspiring estimate, we expect that future observations of FRBs can help to falsify their physical origins from the PBH binaries coalescences. In the future, the gravitational waves produced by mergers of small black holes can be detected by high frequency gravitational wave detectors. We believe that this work would be a useful addition to the current literature on multimessenger astronomy and cosmology.
If primordial black holes with masses of $10^{25},mbox{g}gtrsim m gtrsim 10^{17},mbox{g}$ constitute a non-negligible fraction of the galactic dark-matter haloes, their existence should have observable consequences: they necessarily collide with galactic neutron stars, nest in their centers and accrete the dense matter, eventually converting them to neutron-star mass black holes while releasing the neutron-star magnetic field energy. Such processes may explain the fast radio bursts phenomenology, in particular their millisecond durations, large luminosities ${sim}10^{43}$ erg/s, high rate of occurrence $gtrsim 1000/mbox{day}$, as well as high brightness temperatures, polarized emission and Faraday rotation. Longer than the dynamical timescale of the Bondi-like accretion for light primordial black holes allows for the repeating fast radio bursts. This explanation follows naturally from (assumed) existence of the dark matter primordial black holes and requires no additional unusual phenomena, in particular no unacceptably large magnetic fields of neutron stars. In our model, the observed rate of fast radio bursts throughout the Universe follows from the presently known number of neutron stars in the Galaxy.
Boson stars may consist of a new type of light singlet scalar particles with nontrivial self-interactions, and may compose a fraction of the dark matter in the Universe. In this work, we study the dynamics of boson stars with Liouville and logarithmic scalar self-interaction potentials as benchmarks. We perform a numerical analysis as well as a semi-analytic study on how the compactness and the total mass will deviate from that of the usual boson stars formed with a quartic repulsive self-interaction. We apply the recently suggested Swampland conjecture to examine whether boson stars with such benchmark potentials belong to the Landscape of a quantum gravity. Using the mass constraint on the macroscopic compact halo object (MACHO) and the cold dark matter (CDM) isocurvature mode constraint from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), we derive the allowed mass range of scalar particles which compose the boson star. We further analyze applications of the lensing of fast radio bursts (FRBs) and the gravitational wave (GW) detection to probe the presence of such boson stars and constrain the parameter space of their corresponding models. We discuss how the two types of boson star potentials can be discriminated by the FRB and GW measurements.
A binary neutron star (BNS) merger can lead to various outcomes, from indefinitely stable neutron stars, through supramassive (SMNS) or hypermassive (HMNS) neutron stars supported only temporarily against gravity, to black holes formed promptly after the merger. Up-to-date constraints on the BNS total mass and the neutron star equation of state suggest that a long-lived SMNS may form in $sim 0.45-0.9$ of BNS mergers. A maximally rotating SMNS needs to lose $sim 3-6times 10^{52}$ erg of its rotational energy before it collapses, on a fraction of the spin-down timescale. A SMNS formation imprints on the electromagnetic counterparts to the BNS merger. However, a comparison with observations reveals tensions. First, the distribution of collapse times is too wide and that of released energies too narrow (and the energy itself too large) to explain the observed distributions of internal X-ray plateaus, invoked as evidence for SMNS-powered energy injection. Secondly, the immense energy injection into the blastwave should lead to extremely bright radio transients which previous studies found to be inconsistent with deep radio observations of short gamma-ray bursts. Furthermore, we show that upcoming all-sky radio surveys will constrain the extracted energy distribution, independently of a GRB jet formation. Our results can be self-consistently understood, provided that most BNS merger remnants collapse shortly after formation (even if their masses are low enough to allow for SMNS formation). This naturally occurs if the remnant retains half or less of its initial energy by the time it enters solid body rotation.
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) at cosmological distances have recently been discovered, whose duration is about milliseconds. We argue that the observed short duration is difficult to explain by giant flares of soft gamma-ray repeaters, though their event rate and energetics are consistent with FRBs. Here we discuss binary neutron star (NS-NS) mergers as a possible origin of FRBs. The FRB rate is within the plausible range of NS-NS merger rate and its cosmological evolution, while a large fraction of NS-NS mergers must produce observable FRBs. A likely radiation mechanism is coherent radio emission like radio pulsars, by magnetic braking when magnetic fields of neutron stars are synchronized to binary rotation at the time of coalescence. Magnetic fields of the standard strength (~ 10^{12-13} G) can explain the observed FRB fluxes, if the conversion efficiency from magnetic braking energy loss to radio emission is similar to that of isolated radio pulsars. Corresponding gamma-ray emission is difficult to detect by current or past gamma-ray burst satellites. Since FRBs tell us the exact time of mergers, a correlated search would significantly improve the effective sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
