Vol 24, No 10

On the Energy Budget of Starquake-induced Repeating Fast Radio Bursts

Wei-Yang Wang (王维扬), Chen Zhang (张晨), Enping Zhou (周恩平), Xiaohui Liu (刘小辉), Jiarui Niu (牛佳瑞), Zixuan Zhou (周子轩), He Gao (高鹤), Jifeng Liu (刘继峰), Renxin Xu (徐仁新) and Bing Zhang (张冰)

Abstract

With a growing sample of fast radio bursts (FRBs), we investigate the energy budget of different power sources within the framework of magnetar starquake triggering mechanism. During a starquake, the energy can be released in any form through strain, magnetic, rotational, and gravitational energies. The strain energy can be converted from three other kinds of energy during starquakes. The following findings are revealed: (1) The crust can store free magnetic energy of ∼1046 erg by existing toroidal fields, sustaining 106 bursts with frequent starquakes occurring due to crustal instability. (2) The strain energy develops as a rigid object spins down, which can be released during a global starquake accompanied by a glitch. However, it takes a long time to accumulate enough strain energy via spindown. (3) The rotational energy of a magnetar with P ≲ 0.1 s can match the energy and luminosity budget of FRBs. (4) The budget of the total gravitational energy is high, but the mechanism and efficiency of converting this energy to radiation deserve further exploration.

Keywords

Key words: stars: magnetars – stars: neutron – radiation mechanisms: non-thermal

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