Fast radio bursts as giant pulses from young rapidly rotating pulsars

TL;DR

This paper proposes that fast radio bursts originate from supergiant pulses emitted by young, rapidly spinning pulsars, with their properties influenced by pulsar birth spins and surrounding supernova remnants.

Contribution

It introduces a model linking FRBs to young pulsars with millisecond periods and predicts observable properties based on pulsar spin-down and supernova remnant evolution.

Findings

FRBs are likely associated with young pulsars in star-forming galaxies.

The brightness and dispersion measure of FRBs depend on pulsar age and spin-down power.

FRB detectability is affected by free-free absorption in supernova ejecta.

Abstract

We discuss possible association of fast radio bursts (FRBs) with supergiant pulses emitted by young pulsars (ages $\sim$ tens to hundreds of years) born with regular magnetic field but very short -- few milliseconds -- spin periods. FRBs are extra-Galactic events coming from distances $d \lesssim 100$ Mpc. Most of the dispersion measure (DM) comes from the material in the freshly ejected SNR shell; for a given burst the DM should decrease with time. FRBs are not expected to be seen below $\sim 300 $ MHz due to free-free absorption in the expanding ejecta. A supernova might have been detected years before the burst; FRBs are mostly associated with star forming galaxies. The model requires that some pulsars are born with very fast spins, of the order of few milliseconds. The observed distribution of spin-down powers $\dot{E}$ in young energetic pulsars is consistent with equal birth rate per decade of $\dot{E}$. Accepting this injection spectrum and scaling the intrinsic brightness of FRBs with $\dot{E}$, we predict the following properties of a large sample of FRBs: (i) the brightest observed events come from a broad distribution in distances; (ii) for repeating bursts brightness either remains nearly constant (if the spin-down time is longer than the age of the pulsar) or decreases with time otherwise; in the latter case DM $\propto \dot{E}$.