No Arabic abstract
Since the discovery of FRB 200428 associated with the Galactic SGR 1935+2154, magnetars are considered to power fast radio bursts (FRBs). It is widely believed that magnetars could form by core-collapse (CC) explosions and compact binary mergers, such as binary neutron star (BNS), binary white dwarfs (BWD), and neutron star-white dwarf (NSWD) mergers. Therefore, it is important to distinguish the various progenitors. The expansion of the merger ejecta produces a time-evolving dispersion measure (DM) and rotation measure (RM) that can probe the local environments of FRBs. In this paper, we derive the scaling laws for the DM and RM from ejecta with different dynamical structures (the mass and energy distribution) in the uniform ambient medium (merger scenario) and wind environment (CC scenario). We find that the DM and RM will increase in the early phase, while DM will continue to grow slowly but RM will decrease in the later phase in the merger scenario. We fit the DM and RM evolution of FRB 121102 simultaneously for the first time in the BNS merger scenario, and find the source age is $ sim9-10 $ yr when it was first detected in 2012, and the ambient medium density is $ sim 2.5-3.1 $ cm$ ^{-3} $. The large offsets of some FRBs are consistent with BNS/NSWD channel. The population synthesis method is used to estimate the rate of compact binary mergers. The rate of BWD mergers is close to the observed FRB rate. Therefore, the progenitors of FRBs may not be unique.
Fast Radios Bursts (FRBs) show large dispersion measures (DMs), suggesting an extragalactic location. We analyze the DMs of the 11 known FRBs in detail and identify steps as integer multiples of half the lowest DM found, 187.5cm$^{-3}$ pc, so that DMs occur in groups centered at 375, 562, 750, 937, 1125cm$^{-3}$ pc, with errors observed <5%. We estimate the likelhood of a coincidence as 5:10,000. We speculate that this could originate from a Galaxy population of FRBs, with Milky Way DM contribution as model deviations, and an underlying generator process that produces FRBs with DMs in discrete steps. However, we find that FRBs tend to arrive at close to the full integer second, like man-made perytons. If this holds, FRBs would also be man-made. This can be verified, or refuted, with new FRBs to be detected.
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.
Recently, Thornton et al. reported the detection of four fast radio bursts (FRBs). The dispersion measures indicate that the sources of these FRBs are at cosmological distance. Given the large full sky event rate ~ 10^4 sky^-1 day^-1, the FRBs are a promising target for multi-messenger astronomy. Here we propose double degenerate, binary white-dwarf (WD) mergers as the source of FRBs, which are produced by coherent emission from the polar region of a rapidly rotating, magnetized massive WD formed after the merger. The basic characteristics of the FRBs, such as the energetics, emission duration and event rate, can be consistently explained in this scenario. As a result, we predict that some FRBs can accompany type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) or X-ray debris disks. Simultaneous detection could test our scenario and probe the progenitors of SNe Ia, and moreover would provide a novel constraint on the cosmological parameters. We strongly encourage future SN and X-ray surveys that follow up FRBs.
Radio signals are delayed when propagating through plasma. This type of delay is frequency-dependent and is usually used for estimating the projected number density of electrons along the line of sight, called the dispersion measure. The dense and clumpy distribution of plasma can cause refractive deflections of radio signals, analogous to lensing effects. Similar to gravitational lensing, there are two contributions to the time delay effect in plasma lensing: a geometric delay, due to increased path length of the signal, and a dispersive delay due to the change of speed of light in a plasma medium. We show the delay time for two models of the plasma distribution, and point out that the estimated dispersion measure can be biased. Since the contribution of the geometric effect can be comparable to that of the dispersive delay, the bias in the measured dispersion measure can be dramatically large if plasma lensing effects are not taken into account when signals propagate through a high-density gradient clump of plasma.
We investigate the possibility of measuring intergalactic magnetic fields using the dispersion measures and rotation measures of fast radio bursts. With Bayesian methods, we produce probability density functions for values of these measures. We distinguish between contributions from the intergalactic medium, the host galaxy and the local environment of the progenitor. To this end, we use constrained, magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the local Universe to compute lines-of-sight integrals from the position of the Milky Way. In particular, we differentiate between predominantly astrophysical and primordial origins of magnetic fields in the intergalactic medium. We test different possible types of host galaxies and probe different distribution functions of fast radio burst progenitor locations inside the host galaxy. Under the assumption that fast radio bursts are produced by magnetars, we use analytic predictions to account for the contribution of the local environment. We find that less than 100 fast radio bursts from magnetars in stellar-wind environments hosted by starburst dwarf galaxies at redshift $z gtrsim 0.5$ suffice to discriminate between predominantly primordial and astrophysical origins of intergalactic magnetic fields. However, this requires the contribution of the Milky Way to be removed with a precision of $approx 1 rm~rad~m^{-2}$. We show the potential existence of a subset of fast radio bursts whose rotation measure carry information on the strength of the intergalactic magnetic field and its origins.