Local Circumnuclear Magnetar Solution to Extragalactic Fast Radio Bursts

We synthesize the known information about fast radio bursts (FRBs) and radio magnetars, and describe an allowed origin near nuclei of external, but non-cosmological, galaxies. This places them at

z\ll 1

, within a few hundred megaparsecs. In this scenario, the high dispersion measure (DM) is dominated by the environment of the FRB, modeled on the known properties of the Milky Way center, whose innermost 100 pc provides 1000 pc cm(−)(3). A radio loud magnetar is known to exist in our galactic center, within ∼2 arcsec of Sgr A*. Based on the polarization, DM, and scattering properties of this known magnetar, we extrapolate its properties to those of Crab-like giant pulses and SGR flares and point out their consistency with observed FRBs. We conclude that galactic center magnetars could be the source of FRBs. This scenario is readily testable with very long baseline interferometry measurements as well as with flux count statistics from large surveys such as CHIME or UTMOST.

Note:

3 pages, no figures. Submitted to MNRAS Letters

Galaxy: center
pulsars: general
stars: magnetars

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