Periodic Activities of Repeating Fast Radio Bursts from Be/X-Ray Binary Systems

Abstract

The frequency-dependent periodic active window of the fast radio burst FRB 180916.J0158+65 (FRB 180916B) was observed recently. In this letter, we propose that a Be/X-ray binary (BeXRB) system, which is composed of a neutron star (NS) and a Be star with a circumstellar disk, might be the source of a repeating FRB with periodic activities, and we apply this model to explain the activity window of FRB 180916B. The interaction between the NS magnetosphere and the accreted material results in evolution of the spin period and the centrifugal force of the NS, leading to the change of the stress in the NS crust. When the stress of the crust reaches the critical value, a starquake occurs and further produces FRBs. The interval between starquakes is estimated to be a few days, which is smaller than the active window of FRB 180916B. When the NS moves out of the disk of the Be star, the interval between starquakes becomes much longer than the orbital period, which corresponds to the nonactive phase. In this model, due to the absorption of the disk of the Be star, a frequency-dependent active window would appear for the FRBs, which is consistent with the observed properties of FRB 180916B. And the contribution of the dispersion measure from the disk of the Be star is small. In addition, the location of FRB 180916B in the host galaxy is consistent with a BeXRB system.

Triggering Mechanism and Material Transfer of a Failed Solar Filament Eruption

“…Interestingly, in some cases, if the filaments have a strong rotation motion during their eruption, even the decay index satisfied with the threshold of torus instability, the filaments still experienced failed eruptions (Zhou et al 2019). In addition, magnetic reconnection between two groups of magnetic field lines below and above the filaments also plays an important role in the filament eruptions (Moore et al 2001;Antiochos et al 1999;Forbes & Isenberg 1991;Antiochos, DeVore, & Klimchuk 1999;Lin & Forbes 2000;Sterling et al 2004;Chen et al 2016;Liu et al 2018b). Song et al (2013) found that some fast CMEs associated with the eruptions of the well-developed long quiescent filaments were not accompanied by any flares.…”

Fast Radio Bursts

“…FRBs can be observed once these two objects are in a certain orbital phase. Recently the chromatic active window has been reproduced in a Be/Xray binary scenario [80]. The second option is that periodicity is due to NS precession, with both free and forced precession being discussed [76,176,185,144].…”

AT2020hur: A Possible Optical Counterpart of FRB 180916B

“…Follow-up broadband radio observations of FRB 180916B updated the period to 16.29 days, with a 6.1 day active window (Aggarwal et al 2020;Marthi et al 2020;Sand et al 2020;Pastor-Marazuela et al 2021). Several models were proposed to explain the periodic activity of FRB 180916B (e.g., Dai & Zhong 2020;Ioka & Zhang 2020;Levin et al 2020;Tong et al 2020;Yang & Zou 2020;Zanazzi & Lai 2020;Deng et al 2021;Geng et al 2021;Li et al 2021b;Wei et al 2022). Besides, a possible period of ∼157 days for FRB 121102 was also suggested by Rajwade et al (2020).…”