The energy structure function of fast radio bursts supports a stochastic origin model

TL;DR

This study analyzes the energy structure function of repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) and finds they behave like a stochastic process, supporting the hypothesis that they originate from neutron star collisions with interstellar objects rather than starquakes.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new statistical method using the energy structure function to distinguish between different FRB origin models, providing evidence for a stochastic origin.

Findings

FRBs exhibit energy behavior similar to stochastic processes.

Earthquake energy shows decay and increasing differences over time.

FRBs differ from earthquakes, supporting a collision-based origin model.

Abstract

The origin of fast radio bursts (FRBs) has remained a mystery up to now. There are two kinds of process invoking neutron stars as an origin of FRBs, namely inner-driven starquakes and outer-driven collisions with interstellar objects (ISOs). The former origin should exhibit an earthquake-like statistical behavior while the latter should show a stochastic process. In this paper, we introduce a new statistical method by making use of the energy structure function of active repeating FRBs and earthquakes. We find that the energy structure function of FRBs exhibits a very different statistical behavior compared to that of earthquakes. On small time-interval scales, the energy of an earthquake show a tendency to decay with time-interval and the energy difference of a pair of events increases with time-interval. Such a behavior is not found in FRBs, whose energy function is very similar to those of a stochastic process. Our result shows that repeating FRBs may have an origin process differing from that of earthquakes, i.e., FRBs arise from a series of unrelated events such as collisions of a neutron star with ISOs.