Back to Search
Start Over
FRB 200428: an Impact between an Asteroid and a Magnetar
- Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- A fast radio burst (FRB) was recently detected to be associated with a hard X-ray burst from the Galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2154. Scenarios involving magnetars for FRBs are hence highly favored. In this work, we suggest that the impact between an asteroid and a magnetar could explain such a detection. According to our calculations, an asteroid of mass $10^{20}$ g will be disrupted at a distance of $7 \times 10^9$ cm when approaching the magnetar. The accreted material will flow along the magnetic field lines from the Alfv\'en radius $\sim 10^7$ cm. After falling onto the magnetar's surface, an instant accretion column will be formed, producing a Comptonized X-ray burst and an FRB in the magnetosphere. We show that all the observational features of FRB 200428 could be interpreted self-consistently in this scenario. We predict quasi-periodic oscillations in this specific X-ray burst, which can serve as an independent observational test.<br />Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. References updated, accepted by ApJL
Details
- Database :
- arXiv
- Publication Type :
- Report
- Accession number :
- edsarx.2006.04601
- Document Type :
- Working Paper
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aba83c