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

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chen, Yi-Nan, Zhang, Yong-Kun, Dai, Zi-Gao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Chen, Yi-Nan
Zhang, Yong-Kun
Dai, Zi-Gao
author_facet Chen, Yi-Nan
Zhang, Yong-Kun
Dai, Zi-Gao
contents 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.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_11283
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The energy structure function of fast radio bursts supports a stochastic origin model
Chen, Yi-Nan
Zhang, Yong-Kun
Dai, Zi-Gao
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
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.
title The energy structure function of fast radio bursts supports a stochastic origin model
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.11283