On the origin of a highly dispersed coherent radio burst

By E. Keane, B. W. Stappers, Michael Kramer, A. I. F. Radioastronomie, Bonn, -. J. B. C. F. Astrophysics, U. Manchester. 2012

194 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We discuss the possible source of a highly dispersed radio transient discovered in the Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey (PMPS). The pulse has a dispersion measure of 746 cm-3 pc, a peak flux density of 400 mJy for the observed pulse width of 7.8 ms and a flat spectrum across a 288-MHz band centred on 1374 MHz. The flat spectrum suggests that the pulse did not originate from a pulsar, but is consistent with radio-emitting magnetar spectra. The non-detection of subsequent bursts constrains any possible pulsar period to ???1 s, and the pulse energy distribution to being much flatter than typical giant pulse emitting pulsars. The burst is also consistent with the radio signal theorized from an annihilating mini black hole. Extrapolating the PMPS detection rate provides a limit of ? on the density of these objects. We investigate the consistency of these two scenarios, plus several other possible solutions, as potential explanations to the origin of the pulse, as well as for another transient with similar properties: the Lorimer burst.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/86a7ef7129a41c15d8f62ffd79d225cdc51f55c3

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. E. Berger
4. B. Margalit
5. L. Sironi
6. Pawan Kumar
7. P. Lasky
8. V. Ravi

Citations in the corpus

• A burst in a wind bubble and the impact on baryonic ejecta: high-energy gamma-ray flashes and afterglows from fast radio bursts and pulsar-driven supernova remnants (2016, background): “Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are a new class of transients discovered in the last decade (Lorimer et al. 2007; Keane et al. 2012; Thornton et al. 2013; Burke-Spolaor & Bannister 2014; Spitler et al. 2014; Ravi, Shannon & Jameson 2015; Petroff et al. 2015; Masui et al. 2015; Champion et al. 2015).”
• A living theory catalogue for fast radio bursts (2018, methodology): “While some early speculation considered FRBs to be of galactic origin (Keane et al., 2012; Burke-Spolaor and Bannister, 2014; Bannister and Madsen, 2014; Maoz et al., 2015), current consensus is that their excessively large dispersion measure (DM) (see Section 2.”
• A model for fast extragalactic radio bursts (2014, background): “…star (Egorov & Postnov 2009), collapse of a supermassive neutron star (Falcke & Rezzolla 2013; Zhang 2014), binary white dwarf or neutron star merger (Keane et al. 2012; Kashiyama et al. 2013; Lipunov & Pruzhinskaya 2013; Totani 2013), evaporation of primordial black holes (Keane et al. 2012).”
• Fast radio bursts as synchrotron maser emission from decelerating relativistic blast waves (2019, background): “…emission with durations of less than a few milliseconds and large dispersion measures (DM), indicating an extragalactic origin (Lorimer et al. 2007; Keane et al. 2012; Thornton et al. 2013; Spitler et al. 2014; Ravi et al. 2015; Champion et al. 2016; Petroff et al. 2016; Lawrence et al. 2017;…”
• FAST RADIO BURSTS FROM THE INSPIRAL OF DOUBLE NEUTRON STARS (2016, background): “Up to now, 17 FRBs have been detected (Lorimer et al. 2007; Keane et al. 2012; Thornton et al. 2013; Burke-Spolaor & Bannister 2014; Spitler et al. 2014, 2016; Ravi et al. 2015; Petroff et al. 2015; Champion et al. 2015; Masui et al. 2015; Keane et al. 2016).”
• Fast radio bursts: search sensitivities and completeness (2014, unknown): “Throughout we include FRB 010621 in our analyses but note that this event has a very high probability of being Galactic in origin (Keane et al. 2012; Bannister & Madsen 2014): we use this to gauge a reasonable uncertainty in the maximum Milky Way contribution to each event’s DM. Subtracting this…”
• Fifty years of pulsar candidate selection: from simple filters to a new principled real-time classification approach (2016, background): “Real-time searches for fast radio bursts (Lorimer et al. 2007; Keane et al. 2012; Thornton et al. 2013) are also becoming increasingly common (Karastergiou et al. 2015; Law et al. 2015; Petroff et al. 2015).”
• Fast Radio Bursts from Magnetars Born in Binary Neutron Star Mergers and Accretion Induced Collapse (2019, background): “…large dispersion measures (DM) well above the contribution from the Milky Way, thus implicating an extragalactic origin (e.g., Lorimer et al. 2007; Keane et al. 2012; Thornton et al. 2013; Spitler et al. 2014; Ravi et al. 2015; Champion et al. 2016; Petroff et al. 2016; Lawrence et al. 2017;…”
• A Concordance Picture of FRB 121102 as a Flaring Magnetar Embedded in a Magnetized Ion–Electron Wind Nebula (2018, background): “Fast radio burts (FRB) are short pulses of coherent radio emission lasting less than a few milliseconds (Lorimer et al. 2007; Keane et al. 2012; Thornton et al. 2013; Spitler et al. 2014; Ravi et al. 2015; Champion et al. 2016; Petroff et al. 2016; Lawrence et al. 2017) with large dispersion…”
• GIANT SPARKS AT COSMOLOGICAL DISTANCES? (2014, methodology): “Another archival search of the Parkes Galactic Plane Survey data found a transient event in a single beam and with a dispersion measure of 746 cm−3 pc (Keane et al. 2012).”
• The birth of black holes: neutron star collapse times, gamma-ray bursts and fast radio bursts (2014, background): “1 IN T RO D U C T I O N Fast radio bursts (FRBs; Lorimer et al. 2007; Keane et al. 2012; Thornton et al. 2013) are among the most exciting astronomical discoveries of the last decade.”
• The SUrvey for Pulsars and Extragalactic Radio Bursts – II. New FRB discoveries and their follow-up. (2017, unknown): “…radio telescope, the Arecibo Observatory, the upgraded Molonglo synthesis telescope (UTMOST) and the Australian SKA Pathfinder (Lorimer et al. 2007; Keane et al. 2012; Thornton et al. 2013; Burke-Spolaor & Bannister 2014; Spitler et al. 2014; Masui et al. 2015; Petroff et al. 2015a, 2017;…”
• Five new fast radio bursts from the HTRU high-latitude survey at Parkes: First evidence for two-component bursts (2015, methodology): “…from the Milky Way expected by the NE2001 model (Cordes & Lazio 2002), and as this and other similar models have large uncertainties on individual lines-of-sight a Galactic origin for this burst could not be ruled out (Keane et al. 2012; Bannister & Madsen 2014). c© 2015 RAS ar X iv :1 51 1.”
• Science with the Murchison Widefield Array (2012, background): “They do appear as repeating transients and so many of the techniques required will be similar to those for other transients (Lorimer et al. 2007; Keane et al. 2012).”