Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are mysterious transient phenomena. The study of repeating FRBs may provide useful information about their nature due to their redetectability. The two most famous repeating sources are FRBs 121102 and 180916, with a period of 157 days and 16.35 days, respectively. Previous studies suggest that the periodicity of FRBs is likely associated with neutron star (NS) binary systems. Here we introduce a new model which proposes that periodic repeating FRBs are due to the interaction of a NS with its planet in a highly elliptical orbit. The periastron of the planet is very close to the NS so that it would be partially disrupted by tidal force every time it passes through the periastron. Fragments generated in the process could interact with the compact star through the Alfvén wing mechanism and produce FRBs. The model can naturally explain the repeatability of FRBs with a period ranging from a few days to several hundred days, but it generally requires that the eccentricity of the planet's orbit should be large enough. Taking FRBs 121102 and 180916 as examples, it is shown that the main features of the observed repeating behaviors can be satisfactorily accounted for.
Very recently Spitler et al. (2016) and Scholz et al. (2016) reported their detections of sixteen additional bright bursts from the direction of the fast radio burst (FRB) 121102. This repeating FRB is inconsistent with all the catastrophic event models put forward previously for hypothetically non-repeating FRBs. Here we propose a different model, in which highly magnetized pulsars travel through asteroid belts of other stars. We show that a repeating FRB could originate from such a pulsar encountering lots of asteroids in the belt. During each pulsar-asteroid impact, an electric field induce…
Some repeating fast radio burst (FRB) sources exhibit complex polarization behaviors, including frequency-dependent depolarization, variation of rotation measure (RM), and oscillating spectral structures of polarized components. Very recently, Feng et al. (2022) reported that active repeaters exhibit conspicuous frequency-dependent depolarization and a strong correlation between RM scatter ($σ_{\rm RM}$) and the temporal scattering time ($τ_{\rm s}$), $σ_{\rm RM}\proptoτ_{\rm s}^{1.0\pm0.2}$, both of which can be well described by multi-path propagation through a magnetized inhomogeneous plasm…
A Search for Rotation Measure Flare Candidates in Repeating Fast Radio Bursts
Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院紫金山天文台）；State Key Laboratory of Radio Astronomy and Technology, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院紫金山天文台射电天文与技术重点实验室）
Popular Fast Radio Burst models involve rotating magnetized neutron stars, yet no rotational periodicities have been found. Small datasets exclude exact periodicity in FRB 121102. Recent observations of over 1500 bursts from each of FRB 121102 and FRB 20201124A also have not found periodicity. Periodograms of events with cosine-distributed random offsets as large as $\pm 0.6 P$ from a strict period $P$ would still reveal the underlying periodicity. The sensitivity of periodograms of long data series, such as bursts observed on multiple days, to slow frequency drifts is mitigated by considering…
Ultraluminous X-ray bursts (hereafter ULXBs) are ultraluminous X-ray flares with a fast rise ($\sim$ one minute) and a slow decay ($\sim$ an hour), which are commonly observed in extragalactic globular clusters. Most ULXBs are observational one-off bursts, whereas five flares from the same source in NGC 5128 were discovered by Irwin et al. (2016). In this Letter, we propose a neutron star (NS)-white dwarf (WD) binary model with super-Eddington accretion rates to explain the repeating behavior of the ULXB source in NGC 5128. With an eccentric orbit, the mass transfer occurs at the periastron wh…
Long-term periodicity in the rate of flares is observed for two repeating sources of fast radio bursts (FRBs). In this paper We present a hydrodynamical modeling of a massive binary consisting of a magnetar and an early-type star. We model the interaction of the pulsar wind from the magnetar with an intense stellar wind. It is shown that only during a fraction of the orbital period radio emission can escape the system. This explains the duty cycle of the two repeating FRB sources with periodic activity. The width of the transparency window depends on the eccentricity, stellar wind properties, …
Asteroids orbiting into the highly magnetized and highly relativistic wind of a pulsar offer a favourable configuration for repeating fast radio bursts (FRB). The body in direct contact with the wind develops a trail formed of a stationary Alfvén wave, called an \textit{Alfvén wing}. When an element of wind crosses the Alfvén wing, it sees a rotation of the ambient magnetic field that can cause radio-wave instabilities. In the observer's reference frame, the waves are collimated in a very narrow range of directions, and they have an extremely high intensity. A previous work, published in 2014,…
We propose a compact binary model for the fast radio burst (FRB) repeaters, where the system consists of a magnetic white dwarf (WD) and a neutron star (NS) with strong bipolar magnetic fields. When the WD fills its Roche lobe, mass transfer will occur from the WD to the NS through the inner Lagrange point. The accreted magnetized materials may trigger magnetic reconnection when they approach the NS surface, and therefore the electrons can be accelerated to an ultra-relativistic speed. In this scenario, the curvature radiation of the electrons moving along the NS magnetic field lines can accou…
Fast radio busts (FRBs) can exhibit a wide variety of polarisation properties, not only between sources but also from burst to burst for a same one. In this work, we revisit the polarisation characters of coherent curvature radiation from a bulk of charged bunches in the magnetosphere of a highly magnetized neutron star. FRBs have been observed to have a variety of polarisation features, such as high levels of circular polarisation or a sign change of circular polarisation. High linear polarisation would appear when the line of sight is inside the emission beam (the on-beam geometry), whereas …
Coherent curvature radiation as the radiation mechanism for fast radio bursts (FRBs) has been discussed since FRBs were discovered. We study the spectral and polarization properties of repeating FRBs within the framework of coherent curvature radiation by charged bunches in the magnetosphere of a highly magnetized neutron star. The spectra can be generally characterized by multisegment broken power laws, and evolve as bunches move and the line of sight sweeps. Emitted waves are highly linear polarized if the line of sight is confined to the beam within an angle of $1/γ$, while circular polariz…
Recently, a precise (sub-arcsecond) localization of the repeating fast radio burst (FRB) 121102 has led to the discovery of persistent radio and optical counterparts, the identification of a host dwarf galaxy at a redshift of $z=0.193$, and several campaigns of searches for higher-frequency counterparts, which gave only upper limits on the emission flux. Although the origin of FRBs remains unknown, most of the existing theoretical models are associated with pulsars, or more specifically, magnetars. In this paper, we explore persistent high-energy emission from a rapidly rotating highly magneti…
AU or pc? Inferring the distance of magnetized plasma near FRBs from propagation diagnostics
National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台）；Department of Astronomy, Tsinghua University（清华大学天文系）；School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University（南京大学天文与空间科学学院）；Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics (Nanjing University), Ministry of Education（教育部现代天文与天体物理实验室（南京大学））；Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院紫金山天文台）
Observations of powerful radio waves from neutron star magnetospheres raise the question of how strong waves interact with particles in a strong background magnetic field $B_{bg}$. This problem is examined by solving the particle motion in the wave. Remarkably, waves with amplitudes $E_0>B_{bg}$ pump particle energy via repeating resonance events, quickly reaching the radiation reaction limit. As a result, the wave is scattered with a huge cross section. This fact has implications for models of fast radio bursts and magnetars. Particles accelerated in the wave emit gamma-rays, which can trigge…
A unified model of active repeating fast radio bursts associated with persistent radio sources
School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University（南京大学天文与空间科学学院）；Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics (Nanjing University), Ministry of Education（教育部现代天文学和天体物理重点实验室（南京大学））；Research Center for Astronomical Computing, Zhejiang Laboratory（浙江实验室天体计算研究中心）；Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics, Zhejiang University（浙江大学物理学院天体物理研究所）；School of Physics and Physical Engineering, Qufu Normal University（曲阜师范大学物理与光电工程学院）；Department of Astronomy, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学天文学系）；Department of Physics, The University of Hong Kong（香港大学物理系）
Numerical simulations of low-mass black hole-neutron star mergers with moderate eccentricities
Institut für Physik und Astronomie, Universität Potsdam（波茨坦大学物理与天文学研究所）；Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)（马克斯·普朗克引力物理学研究所（爱因斯坦研究所））
In this paper, we propose a new scenario in which a rapidly-rotating strongly-magnetized pulsar without any surrounding supernova ejecta produces fast radio bursts (FRBs) repeatedly via some mechanisms, and meanwhile, an ultra-relativistic electron/positron pair wind from the pulsar sweeps up its ambient dense interstellar medium, giving rise to a non-relativistic pulsar wind nebula (PWN). We show that the synchrotron radio emission from such a PWN is bright enough to account for the recently-discovered persistent radio source associated with the repeating FRB 121102 in reasonable ranges of th…
We study stable spheroidal configurations of magnetized Strange Stars using an axially symmetric metric in spherical coordinates that uses a gamma parameter to link the anisotropy in the Equation of State due to the magnetic field with the deformation of the star. The stars are composed by magnetized Strange Quark Matter described within the framework of the MIT-Bag model. Their masses, radii, eccentricity, redshift and mass quadrupole moment are computed. Results are compared with spherical Strange Stars solutions obtained with TOV equations and observational data of Strange Stars candidates.…
Gravitational Waves from Strongly Magnetized Eccentric Neutron Star Binaries
International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research（国际理论科学中心，塔塔基础研究所）；Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth（马萨诸塞大学达特茅斯分校物理系）；Center for Scientific Computing and Data Science Research, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth（马萨诸塞大学达特茅斯分校科学计算与数据科学研究中心）
The fast radio bursts ( FRBs ) are energetic radio bursts with millisecond duration only observed at radio frequencies. The generation mechanism is still mysterious. We have proposed a generation mechanism of both repeating and one-off FRBs. They arise from the axion star collision with neutron star or magnetized accretion disk of galactic black hole. Once we accept the existence of the axions, we find that the mechanism well explain previously observed spectral-temporal features. In this paper we show that it also explains recently observed phenomena such as downward drifting in the repeating…
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) last for $\sim $ few milli-seconds and, hence, are likely to arise from the gravitational collapse of supra-massive, spinning neutron stars after they lose the centrifugal support (Falcke \& Rezzolla 2014). In this paper, we provide arguments to show that the repeating burst, FRB 121102, can also be modeled in the collapse framework provided the supra-massive object implodes either into a Kerr black hole surrounded by highly magnetized plasma or into a strange quark star. Since the estimated rates of FRBs and SN Ib/c are comparable, we put forward a common progenitor s…
Recent observations discovered that some repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) show complicated variations and reversals of Faraday rotation measures (RMs), indicating that the sources of these FRBs are embedded in a dynamically magnetized environment. One possible scenario is that repeating FRBs are generated by pulsars in binary systems, especially containing a high-mass companion with strong stellar outflows. Here, we study the RM variations caused by stellar winds, and a possible stellar disc. If the magnetic field is radial in the stellar wind, RM will not reverse except if the magnetic axis…
Recently, some fast radio burst (FRB) repeaters were reported to exhibit complex, diverse variations of Faraday rotation measures (RMs), which implies that they are surrounded by an inhomogeneous, dynamically evolving, magnetized environment. We systematically investigate some possible astrophysical processes that may cause RM variations of an FRB repeater. The processes include (1) a supernova remnant (SNR) with a fluctuating medium; (2) a binary system with stellar winds from a massive/giant star companion or stellar flares from a low-mass star companion; (3) a pair plasma medium from a neut…
The origin of fast radio bursts (FRBs) is still a mystery. One model proposed to interpret the only known repeating object, FRB 121102, is that the radio emission is generated from asteroids colliding with a highly magnetized neutron star (NS). With N-body simulations, we model a debris disc around a central star with an eccentric orbit intruding NS. As the NS approaches the first periastron passage, most of the comets are scattered away rather than being accreted by the NS. To match the observed FRB rate, the debris belt would have to be at least three orders of magnitude more dense than the …
Tidal capture and repeating partial tidal disruption events of giant stars
Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics (Nanjing University), Ministry of Education（现代天文与天体物理教育部重点实验室）；School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University（南京大学天文与空间科学学院）
We have proposed a model of non repeating fast radio bursts ( FRBs ); the collisions between axion stars and neutron stars generate the bursts. In this paper, we propose a model of repeating FRBs which shows that they arise from the several collisions between magnetized accretion disk of a black hole and an axion star orbiting the black hole. There would be many axions stars condensing as dark matter in an early stage galaxy so that such collisions arises repeatedly. The radiations are emitted by coherent oscillations of electrons in the accretion disk. The oscillations are caused by oscillati…
It has been suggested that a non-repeating fast radio burst (FRB) represents the final signal of a magnetized neutron star collapsing to a black hole. In this model, a supramassive neutron star supported by rapid rotation, will collapse to a black hole several thousand to million years after its birth as a result of spin down. The collapse violently snaps the magnetic-field lines anchored on the stellar surface, thus producing an electromagnetic pulse that will propagate outwards and accelerate electrons producing a massive radio burst, i.e. a "blitzar". We present a systematic study of the gr…
Bridging Roche Lobe Overflow and micro-TDEs: The Runaway Evolution of Eccentric Mass Transfer in Star-Black Hole Binaries
Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao-Tong University（上海交大李政道研究所）；Department of Physics, College of Sciences, Shanghai University（上海大学理学院）；Department of Astronomy, Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, Cornell University（康奈尔大学天文学系天体物理学与行星科学中心）
An invariant energy release hierarchy in a repeating fast radio burst
Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院紫金山天文台）；CSIRO Space and Astronomy, Australia Telescope National Facility（澳大利亚联邦科学与工业研究组织空间与天文部，澳大利亚望远镜国家设施）；School of Astronomy and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学天文与空间科学学院）；State Key Laboratory of Radio Astronomy and Technology, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院紫金山天文台射电天文与技术重点实验室）；Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学李政道研究所）；South-Western Institute for Astronomy Research, Yunnan Key Laboratory of Survey Science, Yunnan University（云南大学西南天文研究所，云南省测绘科学重点实验室）；School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University（南京大学天文与空间科学学院）；Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nanjing University（南京大学现代天文学与天体物理重点实验室）；Department of Astronomy, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学天文学系）
Recent studies of fast radio bursts (FRBs) have led to many theories associating them with young neutron stars. If this is the case, then the presence of supernova ejecta and stellar winds provide a changing dispersion measure (DM) and rotation measure (RM) that can potentially be probes of the environments of FRB progenitors. Here we summarize the scalings for the DM and RM in the cases of a constant density ambient medium and of a progenitor stellar wind. Since the amount of ionized material is controlled by the dynamics of the reverse shock, we find the DM changes more slowly than in previo…
Radiation Reaction effects on Coherent Emission in Relativistic Magnetized Shocks
State Key Laboratory of Ultra-intense Laser Science and Technology, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院上海光学精密机械研究所）；South-Western Institute for Astronomy Research, Yunnan Key Laboratory of Survey Science, Yunnan University（云南大学）
A steadily declining dispersion measure for the repeating fast radio burst FRB 20220529A: Evidence for an FRB engine embedded in an expanding supernova remnant
McGill University（麦吉尔大学）；University of Toronto（多伦多大学）；Northwestern University（西北大学）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）
The X-ray flares have usually been ascribed to long-lasting activities of the central engine of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), e.g., fallback accretion. The GRB X-ray plateaus, however, favor a millisecond magnetar central engine. The fallback accretion can be significantly suppressed due to the propeller effect of a magnetar. Therefore, if the propeller regime cannot resist the mass flow onto the surface of the magnetar efficiently, the X-ray flares raise upon the magnetar plateau would be hinted. In this work, such peculiar cases are connected to the accretion process of a magnetar, and an implica…
The periodic activity of repeating fast radio burst (FRB) 180916.J0158+65 was recently reported by the CHIME/FRB Collaboration team. 28 bursts from this source not only show a $\sim16$-day period with an active phase of $\sim 4.0$ days but also exhibit a broken power law in differential energy distribution. In this paper, we suggest that FRB 180916.J0158+65-like periodic FRBs would provide a unique probe of extragalactic asteroid belts (EABs), based on our previously-proposed pulsar-EAB impact model, in which repeating FRBs arise from an old-aged, slowly-spinning, moderately-magnetized pulsar …
A second-scale periodicity in an active repeating fast radio burst source
School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University（南京大学天文与空间科学学院）；Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics (Nanjing University), Ministry of Education（现代天体学与天体物理学教育部重点实验室（南京大学））；Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院紫金山天文台）；School of Physics and Astromoy, Anqing Normal University（安庆师范大学物理与天文学院）；Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Anqing Normal University（安庆师范大学天体物理研究所）；Guizhou Provincial Laboratory of Big Data, College of Big Data and Information Engineering, Guizhou University（贵州大学大数据与信息工程学院贵州省大数据重点实验室）；Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院新疆天文台）；State Key Laboratory of Radio Astronomy and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院射电天文与技术国家重点实验室）；Xinjiang Key Laboratory of Radio Astrophysics（新疆射电天文重点实验室）；College of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学天文与空间科学学院）
A sudden dramatic change and recovery of magneto-environment of a repeating fast radio burst
Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院紫金山天文台）；National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台）；Institute for Frontiers in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学前沿天文学与天体物理研究所）；School of Astronomy and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学天文与空间科学学院）；Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院凯尔天体物理学中心）；Owens Valley Radio Observatory, California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院欧文斯谷射电天文台）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, West Virginia University（西弗吉尼亚大学物理与天文学系）；Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology, West Virginia University（西弗吉尼亚大学引力波与宇宙学中心）；Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy（荷兰射电天文研究所）；Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学安东·潘内克天文研究所）；Department of Astronomy, Peking University（北京大学天文学系）
We analyse photometric observations of the supernova (SN) impostor SN 2000ch in NGC 3432 covering the time since its discovery. This source was previously observed to have four outbursts in 2000-2010. Observations now reveal at least three additional outbursts in 2004-2007, and sixteen outbursts in 2010-2022. Outburst light curves are irregular and multipeaked, exhibiting a wide variety of peak magnitude, duration, and shape. The outbursts after 2008 repeat with a period of 200.7$\pm{2}$ d, while the outburst in 2000 seems to match with a shorter period. The next outburst should occur around J…
Recent polarization measurements of fast radio bursts (FRBs) provide new insights on these enigmatic sources. We show that the nearly 100% linear polarization and small variation of the polarization position angles (PAs) of multiple bursts from the same source suggest that the radiation is produced near the surface of a strongly magnetized neutron star. As the emitted radiation travels through the magnetosphere, the electric vector of the X-mode wave adiabatically rotates and stays perpendicular to the local magnetic field direction. The PA freezes at a radius where the plasma density becomes …
We model the sample of fast radio bursts (FRB), including the newly discovered CHIME repeaters, using the synchrotron blast wave model of Metzger, Margalit & Sironi (2019). This model postulates that FRBs are precursor radiation from ultra-relativistic magnetized shocks generated as flare ejecta from a central engine collide with an effectively stationary external medium. Downward drifting of the burst frequency structure naturally arises from deceleration of the blast-wave. The data are consistent with FRBs being produced by flares of energy $E_{\rm flare} \sim 10^{43}-10^{46}(f_ξ/10^{-3})^{-…
Neutron stars are strongly magnetized rotating compact objects. Therefore they also produce huge electric fields accelerating particles to ultra-relativistic energies. The simplest magnetic topology is a dipole traditionally located at the stellar centre. In this paper, we reinvestigate the consequences of an off-centred rotating magnetic dipole, showing accurate magnetic field line geometries, the associated spin-down luminosity as well as the corresponding electromagnetic kick and torque imprinted to the neutron star. Results are obtained by time dependent numerical simulations of Maxwell eq…
