Abstract
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) with unknown origin emit a huge luminosity (about 1 Jy at 1 GHz) with a duration of milliseconds or less at extragalactic distances estimated from their large dispersion measure (DM). We propose herein a scenario for a collision between a neutron star (NS) and a white dwarf (WD) as the progenitor of the FRBs by considering the burst duration scaling to the collision time and the radio luminosity proportional to the kinetic energy of the collision. The relations among the observed flux density, pulse width, and the DM are derived from the model and compared with the statistical results from the observed FRBs. Although the sample is quite small, we tentatively report a nearly inverse-square correlation between the observed peak flux density and the DM excess, which is an consequence of the assumption that the DM excess (i.e. that not due to our Galaxy) is dominated by the intergalactic medium. We also tentatively note a correlation among the duration of the FRB and the DM excess (possibly interpreted as due to the broadening of the signal in the intergalactic medium) and a correlation among the duration of the FRB and the flux density (shorter burst should be brighter), both roughly in agreement with the proposed model.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abbott, B.P., et al.: Astrophys. J. 848, L13 (2017a)
Abbott, B.P., et al.: Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 161101 (2017b)
Abbott, B.P., et al.: Astrophys. J. 848, L12 (2017c)
Bannister, K.W., et al.: Astrophys. J. 841, L12 (2017)
Bhandari, S., et al.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 475, 1427 (2018)
Blandford, R.D., Königl, A.: Astrophys. J. 232, 34 (1979)
Burke-Spolaor, S., Bannister, K.W.: Astrophys. J. 792, 19 (2014)
Caleb, M., et al.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 468, 3746 (2017)
Champion, D.J., et al.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 460, L30 (2016)
Chatterjee, S., et al.: Nature 541, 58 (2017)
Cordes, J.M., Lazio, T.J.W.: arXiv:astro-ph/0207156 (2002)
Cordes, J.M., McLaughlin, M.A.: Astrophys. J. 596, 1142 (2003)
Cordes, J.M., Wasserman, I.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 457, 232 (2016)
Cordes, J.M., Wharton, R.S., Spitler, L.G., Chatterjee, S., Wasserman, I.: arXiv:1605.05890 (2016)
Dai, Z.G., Wang, J.S., Wu, X.F., Huang, Y.F.: Astrophys. J. 829, 27 (2016)
Falcke, H., Rezzolla, L.: Astron. Astrophys. 562, A137 (2014)
Farah, W., et al.: The Astronomer’s Telegram, No. 11675 (2018)
Geng, J.J., Huang, Y.F.: Astrophys. J. 809, 24 (2015)
Ghisellini, G., Locatelli, N.: Astron. Astrophys. 613, A61 (2018)
Ghisellini, G., Padovani, P., Celotti, A., Maraschi, L.: Astrophys. J. 407, 65 (1993)
Goldreich, P., Julian, W.H.: Astrophys. J. 157, 869 (1969)
Gu, W.-M., Dong, Y.-Z., Liu, T., Ma, R.-Y., Wang, J.-F.: Astrophys. J. 823, L28 (2016)
Horiuchi, S., et al.: Astrophys. J. 738, 154 (2011)
Inoue, S.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 348, 999 (2004)
Ioka, K.: Astrophys. J. 598, L79 (2003)
Katz, J.I.: Mod. Phys. Lett. A 31, 1630013 (2016)
Katz, J.I.: arXiv:1804.09092 (2018)
Keane, E.F.: arXiv:1602.05165 (2016)
Keane, E.F., Petroff, E.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 447, 2852 (2015)
Keane, E.F., Stappers, B.W., Kramer, M., Lyne, A.G.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 425, L71 (2012)
Keane, E.F., et al.: Nature 530, 453 (2016)
Kumar, P., Lu, W.-B., Bhattacharya, M.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 468, 2726 (2017)
Law, C.J., et al.: Astrophys. J. 850, 76 (2017)
Locatelli, N., Ghisellini, G.: arXiv:1708.06352 (2017)
Lorimer, D.R., Bailes, M., McLaughlin, M.A., Narkevic, D.J., Crawford, F.: Science 318, 777 (2007)
Lu, W.-B., Kumar, P.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 477, 2470 (2018)
Lyutikov, M.: Astrophys. J. 838, L13 (2017)
Manchester, R.N., Hobbs, G.B., Teoh, A., Hobbs, M.: Astron. J. 129, 1993 (2005)
Mapelli, M., Giacobbo, N.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 479, 4391 (2018)
Margalit, B., Metzger, B.D.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 465, 2790 (2017)
Masui, K., et al.: Nature 528, 523 (2015)
Mottez, F., Zarka, P.: Astron. Astrophys. 569, A86 (2014)
O’Shaughnessy, R., Kim, C.: Astrophys. J. 715, 230 (2010)
Oslowski, S., et al.: The Astronomer’s Telegram, No. 11396 (2018a)
Oslowski, S., et al.: The Astronomer’s Telegram, No. 11385 (2018b)
Özel, F., Freire, P.: Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 54, 401 (2016)
Paschalidis, V., MacLeod, M., Baumgarte, T.W., Shapiro, S.L.: Phys. Rev. D 80, 024006 (2009)
Paschalidis, V., Etienne, Z., Liu, Y.T., Shapiro, S.L.: Phys. Rev. D 83, 064002 (2011)
Pen, U.-L., Connor, L.: Astrophys. J. 807, 179 (2015)
Petroff, E., et al.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 447, 246 (2015)
Petroff, E., et al.: Proc. Astron. Soc. Aust. 33, 45 (2016)
Petroff, E., et al.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 469, 4465 (2017)
Piro, A.L.: Astrophys. J. 824, L32 (2016)
Popov, S.B., Postnov, K.A.: In: Harutyunian, H.A., Mickaelian, A.M., Terzian, Y. (eds.) Evolution of Cosmic Objects Through Their Physical Activity, Proceedings of the Conference dedicated to Viktor Ambartsumian’s 100th anniversary, 15–18 Sep 2008, Yerevan and Byurakan, Armenia, pp. 129–132. Gitutyun Publishing House of NAS RA, Yerevan (2010)
Price, D.C., et al.: The Astronomer’s Telegram, No. 11376 (2018)
Ravi, V.: arXiv:1710.08026 (2017)
Ravi, V., Shannon, R.M., Jameson, A.: Astrophys. J. 799, L5 (2015)
Ravi, V., et al.: Science 354, 1249 (2016)
Scholz, P., et al.: Astrophys. J. 833, 177 (2016)
Scholz, P., et al.: Astrophys. J. 846, 80 (2017)
Shannon, R.M., Oslowski, S., Zhang, S., et al.: The Astronomer’s Telegram, No. 11046 (2017)
Spitler, L.G., et al.: Astrophys. J. 790, 101 (2014)
Spitler, L.G., et al.: Nature 531, 202 (2016)
Sreekumar, S., Schlegel, E.M.: arXiv:1804.07700 (2018)
Tauris, T.M., Manchester, R.N.: Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 298, 625 (1998)
Tendulkar, S.P., et al.: Astrophys. J. 834, L7 (2017)
Thompson, T.A., Kistler, M.D., Stanek, K.Z.: arXiv:0912.0009 (2009)
Thorne, K., Zytkow, A.: Astrophys. J. 212, 832 (1977)
Thornton, D., et al.: Science 341, 53 (2013)
Totani, T.: Publ. Astron. Soc. Jpn. 65, L12 (2013)
Walters, A., Weltman, A., Gaensler, B.M., Ma, Y.-Z., Witzemann, A.: Astrophys. J. 856, 65 (2018)
Yang, Y.-P., Zhang, B.: Astrophys. J. 830, L31 (2016)
Yao, J.M., Manchester, R.N., Wang, N.: Astrophys. J. 835, 29 (2017)
Zhang, B.: Astrophys. J. 780, L21 (2014)
Zhang, Y., Geng, J.-J., Huang, Y.-F.: Astrophys. J. 858, 88 (2018)
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the reviewer’s valuable comments that have improved the paper a lot, and Z.-G. Dai for notes on the manuscript. This research is supported from the following funds: the programme of the Light in China’s Western Region (grant no. XBBS201324), the 973 Program 2015CB857100, the Key Laboratory of Radio Astronomy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11273050).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Liu, X. A model of neutron-star–white-dwarf collision for fast radio bursts. Astrophys Space Sci 363, 242 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-018-3462-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-018-3462-3