Confining Burst Energy Function and Spectral Fringe Pattern of FRB 20121102A with Multifrequency Observations

Abstract

The observed spectral shapes variation and tentative bimodal burst energy distribution (E-distribution) of fast radio burst (FRB) 20121102A with the FAST telescope are great puzzles. Adopting the published multifrequency data observed with the FAST and Arecibo telescopes at $L$ band and the GBT telescope at $C$ band, we investigate these puzzles through Monte Carlo simulations. The intrinsic energy function (E-function) is modeled as $dp/dE\propto E^{-{\alpha }_{\mathrm{E}}}$, and the spectral profile is described as a Gaussian function. A fringe pattern of its spectral peak frequency (${\nu }_{\mathrm{p}}$) in 0.5-8 GHz is inferred from the ${\nu }_{\mathrm{p}}$ distribution of the GBT sample. We estimate the likelihood of ${\alpha }_{\mathrm{E}}$ and the standard deviation of the spectral profile (${\sigma }_{\mathrm{s}}$) by utilizing the Kolmogorov--Smirnov (K-S) test probability for the observed and simulated specific E-distributions. Our simulations yields ${\alpha }_{\mathrm{E}}=1.82_{-0.30}^{+0.10}$ and ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{s}}=0.18_{-0.06}^{+0.28}$ ($3\sigma$ confidence level) with the FAST sample. These results suggest that a single power-law function is adequate to model the E-function of FRB 20121102A. The variations of its observed spectral indices and E-distributions with telescopes in different frequency ranges are due to both physical and observational reasons, i.e. narrow spectral width for a single burst and discrete ${\nu }_p$ fringe pattern in a broad frequency range among bursts, and the selection effects of the telescope bandpass and sensitivity. The putative ${\nu }_p$ fringe pattern cannot be explained with the current radiation physics models of FRBs. Some caveats of possible artificial effects that may introduce such a feature are discussed.

Published in ApJ,13 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Comparison of Burst Properties between FRB 20190520B and FRB 20121102A