Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Michilli, D.
• Seymour, A.
• Hessels, J. W. T.
• Spitler, L. G.
• Gajjar, V.
• Archibald, A. M.
• Bower, G. C.
• Chatterjee, S.
• Cordes, J. M.
• Gourdji, K.
• Heald, G. H.
• Kaspi, V. M.
• Law, C. J.
• Sobey, C.
• Adams, E. A. K.
• Bassa, C. G.
• Bogdanov, S.
• Brinkman, C.
• Demorest, P.
• Fernandez, F.
• Hellbourg, G.
• Lazio, T. J. W.
• Lynch, R. S.
• Maddox, N.
• Marcote, B.
• McLaughlin, M. A.
• Paragi, Z.
• Ransom, S. M.
• Scholz, P.
• Siemion, A. P. V.
• Tendulkar, S. P.
• Van Rooy, P.
• Wharton, R. S.
• Whitlow, D.

Titel

An extreme magneto-ionic environment associated with the fast radio burst source FRB 121102

Ist Teil von

• Nature (London), 2018-01, Vol.553 (7687), p.182-185

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group UK

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Polarimetric observations of the repeating fast radio burst source FRB 121102 suggest that the bursts may originate from a neutron star in the extreme magneto-ionic environment of an accreting massive black hole or supernova remnant. Magnetism around a repetitive radio burst Fast radio bursts last about a millisecond, and appear to come from cosmological distances. The only known repeating burst comes from a star-forming region of a dwarf galaxy at a redshift of about 0.2. Jason Hessels and collaborators have observed these bursts with extremely high time resolution and find that they are almost completely linearly polarized, with very high rotation measures. Such high values require extremely strong magnetic fields, which have previously only been seen around massive black holes, although in principle they could occur in a highly magnetized wind nebula or a supernova remnant. The shortness of the bursts implies an origin near or on a neutron star. Fast radio bursts are millisecond-duration, extragalactic radio flashes of unknown physical origin 1 , 2 , 3 . The only known repeating fast radio burst source 4 , 5 , 6 —FRB 121102—has been localized to a star-forming region in a dwarf galaxy 7 , 8 , 9 at redshift 0.193 and is spatially coincident with a compact, persistent radio source 7 , 10 . The origin of the bursts, the nature of the persistent source and the properties of the local environment are still unclear. Here we report observations of FRB 121102 that show almost 100 per cent linearly polarized emission at a very high and variable Faraday rotation measure in the source frame (varying from +1.46 × 10 5 radians per square metre to +1.33 × 10 5 radians per square metre at epochs separated by seven months) and narrow (below 30 microseconds) temporal structure. The large and variable rotation measure demonstrates that FRB 121102 is in an extreme and dynamic magneto-ionic environment, and the short durations of the bursts suggest a neutron star origin. Such large rotation measures have hitherto been observed 11 , 12 only in the vicinities of massive black holes (larger than about 10,000 solar masses). Indeed, the properties of the persistent radio source are compatible with those of a low-luminosity, accreting massive black hole 10 . The bursts may therefore come from a neutron star in such an environment or could be explained by other models, such as a highly magnetized wind nebula 13 or supernova remnant 14 surrounding a young neutron star.