GIANT SPARKS AT COSMOLOGICAL DISTANCES?

By Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, Eran Ofek, J. Neill, Zheng Zheng, Mario Juric. 2014

188 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Millisecond-duration bright radio pulses at 1.4 GHz with high dispersion measures (DMs) were reported by Lorimer et al., Keane et al., and Thornton et al. Their all-sky rate is ≈104 day−1 above ∼1 Jy. Related events are “Perytons”—similar pulsed, dispersed sources, but most certainly local. Suggested models of fast radio bursts (FRBs) can originate in Earth's atmosphere, in stellar coronae, in other galaxies, and even at cosmological distances. Using physically motivated assumptions combined with observed properties, we explore these models. In our analysis, we focus on the Lorimer event: a 30 Jy, 5 ms duration burst with DM = 375 cm−3 pc, exhibiting a steep frequency-dependent pulse width (the Sparker). To be complete, we drop the assumption that high DMs are produced by plasma propagation and assume that the source produces pulses with frequency-dependent arrival time (“chirped signals”). Within this framework, we explore a scenario in which Perytons, the Sparker, and the FRBs are all atmospheric phenomena occurring at different heights. This model is ad hoc in that we cannot explain why Perytons at higher altitudes show greater DMs or exhibit narrower pulses. Nonetheless, we argue that the Sparker may be a Peryton. We end with two remarks. First, the detection of a single FRB by an interferometer with a kilometer (or longer) baseline will prove that FRBs are of extraterrestrial origin. Second, we urge astronomers to pursue observations and understanding of Perytons since they form (at least) a formidable foreground for the FRBs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b5e149039949c657c2a41bb67b89f61b95da8a86

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. B. Margalit
4. Pawan Kumar
5. V. Ravi
6. Michael Kramer
7. E. Berger
8. R. Shannon

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Bing Zhang
2. Pawan Kumar
3. B. Margalit
4. Simon Johnston
5. B. Metzger
6. V. Ravi
7. J. Wilms
8. Xuefeng Wu

Citations in the corpus

• A FAST RADIO BURST IN THE DIRECTION OF THE CARINA DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY (2014, background): “…are inconsistent, respectively, with constraints from Hα observations on 4 E-mail address: v.vikram.ravi@gmail.com the presence of dense ionized nebulae (Kulkarni et al. 2014), and with the lack of observed deviations from the cold plasma dispersion law (Tuntsov 1014; Katz 2014b; Dennison 2014).”
• THE REPEATING FAST RADIO BURST FRB 121102: MULTI-WAVELENGTH OBSERVATIONS AND ADDITIONAL BURSTS (2016, background): “As discussed in Kulkarni et al. (2014) and Kulkarni et al. (2015), such a nebula will also necessarily emit and absorb radiation.”
• 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): “Various possibilities for the progenitors of FRBs have been proposed (see, e.g., Kulkarni et al. 2014, and references therein).”
• Constraints on the distribution and energetics of fast radio bursts using cosmological hydrodynamic simulations (2014, background): “The latter is far less dependent on the specifics of the observations, and (in the absence of any spectral index information) is a better rough estimate of the integrated radio energy of the burst; see§3.1 of Kulkarni et al. (2014) for a more detailed treatment.”
• A “Cosmic Comb” Model of Fast Radio Bursts (2017, background): “The magnetar giant flare model (Popov & Postnov 2010; Kulkarni et al. 2014; Katz 2016c) is in apparent conflict with the non-detection of bright radio pulse from the SGR 1806-20 giant flare (Tendulkar et al. 2016).”
• COSMOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF FAST RADIO BURST/GAMMA-RAY BURST ASSOCIATIONS (2013, background): “The physical origin of newly discovered fast radio bursts (FRBs, Lorimer et al. 2007; Thornton et al. 2013) is debated (Thornton et al. 2013; Falcke & Rezzolla 2013; Totani 2013; Popov & Postnov 2007, 2013; Kashiyama et al. 2013; Loeb et al. 2014; Zhang 2014; Kulkarni et al. 2014).”
• A Concordance Picture of FRB 121102 as a Flaring Magnetar Embedded in a Magnetized Ion–Electron Wind Nebula (2018, background): “Among the few surviving possibilities are bursts created from a young flaring magnetar (Popov & Postnov 2013; Kulkarni et al. 2014; Lyubarsky 2014; Katz 2016; Lu & Kumar 2016; Beloborodov 2017; Kumar et al. 2017; Lu & Kumar 2017; Metzger et al. 2017; Nicholl et al. 2017b).”
• THE GALACTIC POSITION DEPENDENCE OF FAST RADIO BURSTS AND THE DISCOVERY OF FRB011025 (2014, background): “Kulkarni et al. (2014) provides an overview of several potential Galactic and extragalactic FRB progenitor models, and a look at the credibility of these possibilities.”
• A Multi-telescope Campaign on FRB 121102: Implications for the FRB Population (2017, background): “Both their energetics and distance have inspired a wide variety of models and astrophysical applications (e.g., McQuinn 2014; Kulkarni et al. 2014; Fuller & Ott 2015; Connor et al. 2016b; Cordes & Wasserman 2016; Popov & Pshirkov 2016).”
• FAST RADIO BURSTS FROM THE INSPIRAL OF DOUBLE NEUTRON STARS (2016, background): “Many models have been proposed to explain the properties of FRBs, including giant flares from magnetars (Popov & Postnov 2010; Kulkarni et al. 2014), annihilations of mini-black holes (BHs) (Keane et al. 2012), mergers of two neutron stars (NSs) (Totani 2013), NS-BH mergers (Mingarelli et al.…”
• Fast radio burst source properties and curvature radiation model (2017, background): “Moreover, the strength of Hα and UV continuum flux limits combined with the free-free absorption argument suggest that at least the “Lorimer burst” FRB 010724 is at a distance d & 1 Mpc (Kulkarni et al. 2014).”
• The SUrvey for Pulsars and Extragalactic Radio Bursts – II. New FRB discoveries and their follow-up. (2017, background): “This is consistent with volumetric rates for a range of transients [e.g. low-luminosity long GRBs, short GRBs, NS–NS mergers and supernovae (CC, Type Ia, etc.)] (Totani 2013; Kulkarni et al. 2014).”
• A unified picture of Galactic and cosmological fast radio bursts (2020, methodology): “The Galactic SGR X-ray burst rate is roughly 0.2 yr−1 (volumetric rate ∼ 2×106 Gpc−3 yr−1) above Ex = 1044 erg, and the energy dependence has a similar power-law form as that for FRBs (e.g., Ofek 2007; Kulkarni et al. 2014; Beniamini et al. 2019).”
• Five new fast radio bursts from the HTRU high-latitude survey at Parkes: First evidence for two-component bursts (2015, background): “…favoured by some authors relates FRBs to the giant flares from soft gamma-ray repeaters SGRs (e.g. Popov & Postnov 2007; Thornton et al. 2013; Kulkarni et al. 2014) The initial gamma-ray burst usually lasts just a fraction of a second, and is then followed by hard X-ray emission with power…”
• Supergiant pulses from extragalactic neutron stars (2015, background): “…have been made that the high dispersion measures of ERBs originate from or are mimicked by an emission process in the sources themselves (e.g. Kulkarni et al. 2014; Loeb et al. 2014), the simplest interpretation at present is that the burst sources are extragalactic (e.g. Luan & Goldreich…”