Gravitational Gertsenshtein-Zeldovich mechanism for the Association between GW190425 and FRB 20190425A

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel mechanism linking GW190425 and FRB 20190425A, involving gravitational waves converting into electromagnetic radiation near a magnetar, explaining their observed coincidence.

Contribution

It introduces a new physical model where Gertsenshtein-Zeldovich effect near a magnetar accounts for the GW-FRB association, addressing previous inconsistencies.

Findings

The model reproduces the properties of FRB 20190425A.

GWs are converted into EM waves via the GZ effect near a magnetar.

Inverse Compton scattering explains the GHz FRB emission.

Abstract

The temporal and spatial coincidence between the gravitational wave (GW) event GW190425 and the fast radio burst (FRB) event FRB 20190425A raises the intriguing possibility of a physical connection between the two. The widely discussed possibility invoking the collapse of a supermassive neutron star as the merger product suffers the inconsistency between the model prediction and the measured inclination angle of the system. Here, we propose a novel physical mechanism to account for the association. We envisage a magnetar located at about 2.5 light hours away from the binary neutron star merger site. The kiloherz GWs generated by the merger are converted into kiloherz electromagnetic (EM) radiation via the Gertsenshtein-Zeldovich (GZ) effect near the magnetar. Subsequent inverse Compton scattering off the kilohertz EM waves by relativistic particles generates the observed gigahertz FRB emission. Our calculation reveals that, with appropriate parameter choices, the properties of FRB 20190425A can be reproduced.