Burst timescales and luminosities as links between young pulsars and fast radio bursts
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 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.

Författare

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, Rymd-, geo- och miljövetenskap, Astronomi och plasmafysik

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-Gesellschaft

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, Rymd-, geo- och miljövetenskap, Onsala rymdobservatorium

A. Corongiu

Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)

R. Feiler

Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika

E. Fonseca

West Virginia University

McGill University

Olof Forssén

Chalmers, Rymd-, geo- och miljövetenskap, Geovetenskap och fjärranalys

M. P. Gawroński

Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika

M. Giroletti

Istituto di Radioastronomia

M. A. Kharinov

Russian Academy of Sciences

C. Leung

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Michael Lindqvist

Chalmers, Rymd-, geo- och miljövetenskap, Onsala rymdobservatorium

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, Rymd-, geo- och miljövetenskap, Astronomi och plasmafysik

N. Wang

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Jun Yang

Chalmers, Rymd-, geo- och miljövetenskap, Onsala rymdobservatorium

J. P. Yuan

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature Astronomy

23973366 (eISSN)

Vol. 6 3 393-401

RadioNet 4

Europeiska kommissionen (EU) (EC/H2020/730562), 2017-01-01 -- 2020-12-31.

Ämneskategorier

Astronomi, astrofysik och kosmologi

Fusion, plasma och rymdfysik

Den kondenserade materiens fysik

DOI

10.1038/s41550-021-01569-9

Mer information

Senast uppdaterat

2023-09-15