A Concordance Picture of FRB 121102 as a Flaring Magnetar Embedded in a Magnetized Ion–Electron Wind Nebula

By B. Margalit, B. Metzger. Astrophysical Journal, 2018

173 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The fast radio burst FRB 121102 has repeated multiple times, enabling the identification of its host galaxy and of a spatially coincident, compact, steady (“persistent”) radio synchrotron source. It was proposed that FRB 121102 is powered by a young flaring magnetar, embedded within a decades-old supernova remnant. Using a time-dependent one-zone model, we show that a single expanding magnetized electron–ion nebula (created by the same outbursts likely responsible for the fast radio bursts) can explain all of the basic properties of the persistent source (size, flux, self-absorption constraints) and the large but decreasing rotation measure (RM) of the bursts. The persistent emission is powered by relativistic thermal electrons heated at the termination shock of the magnetar wind, while the RM originates from non-relativistic electrons injected earlier in the nebula’s evolution and cooled through expansion and radiative losses. The model contains few free parameters, which are tightly constrained by observations: the total energy injected into the nebula over its history, ∼1050−1051 erg, agrees with the magnetic energy of a millisecond magnetar; the baryon loading of the magnetar outflow (driven by intermittent flares) is close to the neutron star escape speed; the predicted source age ∼10–40 yr is consistent with other constraints on the nebula size. For an energy input rate following the onset of magnetar activity, we predict secular decay of the RM and persistent source flux, which approximately follow RM ∝ t−(6+α)/2 and , respectively.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e2f7010b318c570dacdb5cc5be58d5c6c60f74a6

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. B. Metzger
2. Bing Zhang
3. B. Margalit
4. E. Berger
5. L. Sironi
6. R. Shannon
7. W. Fong
8. Shivani Bhandari

Citations in the corpus

• Fast radio bursts as synchrotron maser emission from decelerating relativistic blast waves (2019, methodology): “While the physical mechanism, and thus the time-dependence, of the ion mass loss is theoretically uncertain, for FRB 121102 the time-averaged ion injection rate ÛM at the present epoch is constrained to be ∼ 1019 − 1021 g s−1 (Margalit & Metzger 2018).”
• Characterizing the Fast Radio Burst Host Galaxy Population and its Connection to Transients in the Local and Extragalactic Universe (2021, background): “The immediate environment and host galaxy properties of the FRB20121102A source led to a concordant model for FRBs in which bursts are produced by young magnetars, remnants from SLSNe or LGRBs (Margalit & Metzger 2018).”