Burst timescales and luminosities as links between young pulsars and fast radio bursts
Journal article, 2022
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are extragalactic radio flashes of unknown physical origin. Their high luminosities and short durations require extreme energy densities, such as those found in the vicinity of neutron stars and black holes. Studying the burst intensities and polarimetric properties on a wide range of timescales, from milliseconds down to nanoseconds, is key to understanding the emission mechanism. However, high-time-resolution studies of FRBs are limited by their unpredictable activity levels, available instrumentation and temporal broadening in the intervening ionized medium. Here we show that the repeating FRB 20200120E can produce isolated shots of emission as short as about 60 nanoseconds in duration, with brightness temperatures as high as 3 × 1041 K (excluding relativistic effects), comparable with ‘nano-shots’ from the Crab pulsar. Comparing both the range of timescales and luminosities, we find that FRB 20200120E observationally bridges the gap between known Galactic young pulsars and magnetars and the much more distant extragalactic FRBs. This suggests a common magnetically powered emission mechanism spanning many orders of magnitude in timescale and luminosity. In this Article, we probe a relatively unexplored region of the short-duration transient phase space; we highlight that there probably exists a population of ultrafast radio transients at nanosecond to microsecond timescales, which current FRB searches are insensitive to.
Author
K. Nimmo
Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
J. W. T. Hessels
Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
Franz Kirsten
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Astronomy and Plasmaphysics
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
A. Keimpema
Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE)
James M. Cordes
Cornell University
M. P. Snelders
Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy
D. M. Hewitt
Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy
R. Karuppusamy
Max Planck Society
A. M. Archibald
Newcastle University
V. Bezrukovs
Ventspils Augstskola
M. Bhardwaj
McGill University
R. Blaauw
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
S. Buttaccio
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
T. Cassanelli
University of Toronto
John Conway
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Onsala Space Observatory
A. Corongiu
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
R. Feiler
Nicolaus Copernicus University
E. Fonseca
West Virginia University
McGill University
Olof Forssén
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Geoscience and Remote Sensing
M. P. Gawroński
Nicolaus Copernicus University
M. Giroletti
Istituto di Radioastronomia
M. A. Kharinov
Russian Academy of Sciences
C. Leung
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Michael Lindqvist
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Onsala Space Observatory
G. Maccaferri
Istituto di Radioastronomia
B. Marcote
Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE)
K. W. Masui
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
R. Mckinven
University of Toronto
Alexey Melnikov
Russian Academy of Sciences
D. Michilli
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
McGill University
A. G. Mikhailov
Russian Academy of Sciences
C. Ng
University of Toronto
A. Orbidans
Ventspils Augstskola
O. S. Ould-Boukattine
Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy
Z. Paragi
Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE)
A. B. Pearlman
McGill University
California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
E. Petroff
McGill University
Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy
M. Rahman
Sidrat Research
P. Scholz
University of Toronto
K. Shin
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
K. M. Smith
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
I. H. Stairs
University of British Columbia (UBC)
G. Surcis
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
S. P. Tendulkar
National Centre for Radio Astrophysics India
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Wouter Vlemmings
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Astronomy and Plasmaphysics
N. Wang
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Jun Yang
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Onsala Space Observatory
J. P. Yuan
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Nature Astronomy
23973366 (eISSN)
Vol. 6 3 393-401RadioNet 4
European Commission (EC) (EC/H2020/730562), 2017-01-01 -- 2020-12-31.
Subject Categories
Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
Fusion, Plasma and Space Physics
Condensed Matter Physics
DOI
10.1038/s41550-021-01569-9