Are Fast Radio Bursts Made By Neutron Stars?

Abstract

Popular models of repeating Fast Radio Bursts (and perhaps of all Fast Radio Bursts) involve neutron stars because of their high rotational or magnetostatic energy densities. These models take one of two forms: giant but rare pulsar-like pulses like those of Rotating RAdio Transients and outbursts like those of Soft Gamma Repeaters. Here I collate the evidence, recently strengthened, against these models, including the absence of Galactic micro-FRB, and attribute the 16 day periodicity of FRB 180916.J0158+65 to the precession of a jet produced by a massive black hole's accretion disc.

5 pp Revised with further expanded discussion of absence of Galactic micro-FRB and periodicity of FRB 180916.J0158+65

References in corpus (11)

• The Host Galaxy and Redshift of the Repeating Fast Radio Burst FRB 121102
• Fast Radio Bursts
• A periodically active pulsar giving insight into magnetospheric physics
• Fast radio bursts as synchrotron maser emission from decelerating relativistic blast waves
• A repeating fast radio burst source localised to a nearby spiral galaxy
• A single fast radio burst localized to a massive galaxy at cosmological distance
• A fast radio burst localised to a massive galaxy
• A sample of low energy bursts from FRB 121102
• A search for optical bursts from the repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102
• FRB as Products of Accretion Disc Funnels
• AGILE Observations of Two Repeating Fast Radio Bursts with Small Intrinsic Dispersion Measures

Cited by in corpus (6)

• The Physical Mechanisms of Fast Radio Bursts
• Implications of a "Fast Radio Burst" from a Galactic Magnetar
• The Physics of Fast Radio Bursts
• A comparative study of host galaxy properties between Fast Radio Bursts and stellar transients
• Periodic Fast Radio Bursts as a Probe of Extragalactic Asteroid Belts
• Periodic fast radio bursts from forcedly precessing neutron stars, anomalous torque, and internal magnetic field for FRB 180916.J0158+65 and FRB 121102