http://arxiv.org/abs/2003.04644
The periodic activity of repeating fast radio burst (FRB) 180916.J0158+65 was recently reported by the CHIME/FRB Collaboration team. 28 bursts from this source show a $\sim16$-day period with an active phase of $\sim 4.0$ days and their differential energy distribution exhibits a broken power law. In this paper, we suggest that FRB 180916.J0158+65-like periodic FRBs would provide a unique probe of extragalactic asteroid belts (EABs), based on our previously-proposed pulsar-EAB impact model, in which repeating FRBs arise from an old-aged, slowly-spinning, moderately-magnetized pulsar traveling through an EAB around another stellar-mass object. These two objects form a binary and thus the observed period is in fact the orbital period. We constrain the EAB’s properties by using the observed data of FRB 180916.J0158+65. We find that the outer radius of the EAB is smaller than that of its analogue in the solar system by a factor of a few to one order of magnitude and the differential size distribution of the EAB’s asteroids at small diameters (large diameters) is shallower (steeper) than that of the solar-system main belt, even though the two belts could have a comparable mass.
Z. Dai and S. Zhong
Wed, 11 Mar 20
61/65
Comments: 5 pages in emulateapj format, 3 figures