# Collisions of neutron stars with primordial black holes as fast radio bursts engines

## TL;DR

This paper proposes that collisions between primordial black holes and neutron stars can produce fast radio bursts with observed properties, linking dark matter candidates to observable astrophysical phenomena.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel model where primordial black holes interacting with neutron stars explain fast radio bursts without requiring extraordinary conditions.

## Key findings

- Primordial black hole-neutron star collisions can produce millisecond-duration bursts.
- The model accounts for the high luminosity and polarization of fast radio bursts.
- Predicted burst rates align with observed frequencies across the universe.

## Abstract

If primordial black holes with masses of $10^{25}\,\mbox{g}\gtrsim m \gtrsim 10^{17}\,\mbox{g}$ constitute a non-negligible fraction of the galactic dark-matter haloes, their existence should have observable consequences: they necessarily collide with galactic neutron stars, nest in their centers and accrete the dense matter, eventually converting them to neutron-star mass black holes while releasing the neutron-star magnetic field energy. Such processes may explain the fast radio bursts phenomenology, in particular their millisecond durations, large luminosities ${\sim}10^{43}$ erg/s, high rate of occurrence $\gtrsim 1000/\mbox{day}$, as well as high brightness temperatures, polarized emission and Faraday rotation. Longer than the dynamical timescale of the Bondi-like accretion for light primordial black holes allows for the repeating fast radio bursts. This explanation follows naturally from (assumed) existence of the dark matter primordial black holes and requires no additional unusual phenomena, in particular no unacceptably large magnetic fields of neutron stars. In our model, the observed rate of fast radio bursts throughout the Universe follows from the presently known number of neutron stars in the Galaxy.